Podcasts about hbac

In this episode, Thea speaks with American attorney and advocate Hermine Hayes-Klein about Human Rights and Bodily Autonomy in pregnancy and childbirth and what both pregnant women and midwifes can do to protect their rights. Thea experienced violations of her bodily autonomy during her first birth that resulted in an unwanted c-section. In her second pregnancy, she was confronted with the limited choice of midwives for a home birth after cesarian (HBAC) after her chosen midwife was unable to continue her care half way through the pregnancy after the midwife was accused by the state of Austria of causing the death of a new born baby. You can find out more about the case against midwife Margarete Wana here. Please support Margarete's fight for justice here. Cases before the European Court of Human Rights that are mentioned in this episode: Ternovsky vs. Hungary Dubská & Krejzová vs. The Czech Republic Konovalova vs. Russia Folge direkt herunterladen Den kostenlosen Guide zur nicht-medikamentösen Schmerzlinderung kannst du dir hier runterladen. Melde dich hier zum Geburtsgeschichten Newsletter an. Zur Schwangerschaftsyoga Online Videothek geht es hier entlang. Das Webinar zum Thema Kaiserschnittnarben & Narbengewebe gibt es hier. Hier kannst du eine Google Review für den Podcast schreiben und damit dazu beitragen, dass mehr Frauen authentische Geburtsgeschichten hören können. Zum MutterKultur Substack geht es hier entlang. Den Geburtsgeschichten Instagram Kanal findest du hier.

Sponsor: Inito For Birth Hour listeners, the Insight Reader is available right now for just $89 with the code BIRTHHOUR at inito.com. The Birth Hour Links: Know Your Options Online Childbirth Course (code 100OFF for $100 OFF!) Beyond the First Latch Course (comes free with KYO course) Access archived episodes and a private Facebook group via Patreon! 

Tatiana is back with her second VBA2C story!! She first joined us on Episode 107 in 2020 where she dove into all the details around her first two C-sections and her first VBA2C. It was a planned HBAC turned hospital delivery with a supportive OB, but her heart still craved the home birth experience. In this episode, she returns with a full-circle update on the birth of her fourth sweet boy. Her fourth birth was the HBA2C she was hoping for, aka a hotel birth after two cesareans with a midwife she deeply trusted. If you're scratching your head wondering about these logistics, don't worry! Tatiana shares it ALL. We dive into a critical conversation around access. Many providers and hospitals still restrict VBA2C, and it is especially difficult to find support for an out-of-hospital VBA2C. Tatiana shares why expanding midwifery care matters, how pelvic floor therapy during pregnancy can support better outcomes, and why finding a provider you trust (no matter the distance) can make all the difference.Keywords: VBAC, VBA2C, HBA2C, hotel birth, out-of-hospital birth, cesarean, prior vaginal birth, VBAC after two cesareans, birth access, midwifery care, pelvic floor therapy, provider support, informed consentEpisode 107 Tatiana's VBA2C NYT Article on Continuous Fetal MonitoringThe VBAC Link Blog: The 5 Most Common Reasons for C-sectionThe VBAC Link Blog: How to Navigate VBAC Hospital PoliciesNeeded Website: Code VBAC for 20% OffThe Ultimate VBAC Prep Course for ParentsOnline VBAC Doula TrainingAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In this special episode of Australian VBAC Stories, co-host Katelyn, doula and VBAC educator, openly shares the story of her three daughters' births, and the many ways they've shaped who she is today.Her first pregnancy was incredibly challenging. She found herself in a private care model that didn't feel aligned, facing repeated pressure around sweeps and induction. Her labour became intense and overwhelming, with syntocinon, limited support, a posterior baby, and growing concerns for her baby's wellbeing. It ended in a cesarean, followed by separation from her baby and confusing, inconsistent breastfeeding advice. It left her feeling anxious, disconnected from her instincts, and unsure of her voice.From there, Katelyn began to seek something different. She immersed herself in VBAC education and found a supportive community. For her second birth, she planned a VBAC at hole with a private midwife. She laboured for a long time and gave so much of herself to the process, but when progress stalled, she transferred to hospital and ultimately had another cesarean. This time, though, things felt different - she had more agency, more support, and a stronger sense of being part of the decision-making, even as she continued to process the grief of how things unfolded.By her third pregnancy, there was a real shift. Katelyn focused deeply on her emotional wellbeing and letting go of expectations. She laboured at home again, grounded and supported, before transferring for an epidural and cesarean when her baby still wasn't descending. Afterwards, she learned there were physical factors at play - significant adhesions and a velamentous cord insertion - which helped bring clarity and understanding to her experiences.What stands out most in Katelyn's story is the evolution of how she felt within each birth. Through it all, she speaks with honesty about the complexity of grief and healing, but also with a sense of peace, empowerment, and deep gratitude. Her journey has not only shaped her as a mother, but also inspired the work she now does supporting others as a doula and through her VBAC education course.

In this episode, Montréal based doula and birth photographer Barbara shares with us the stories of her two births. Her first child was born via an unwanted c-section. During her second pregnancy, Barbara declined several routine checks as the result of those checks could have prevented her from birthing at home. Her second child was born at home in a birthing pool and welcomed by Barbara and her partner, who was also in the pool. You can find out more about Barbaras work here: Doula & Photographer www.withbarbara.com Doula Training La Relève www.larelevedoula.com *** Melde dich hier zum Geburtsgeschichten Newsletter an. Zur Schwangerschaftsyoga Online Videothek geht es hier entlang. Das Webinar zum Thema Kaiserschnittnarben & Narbengewebe gibt es hier. Hier kannst du eine Google Review für den Podcast schreiben und damit dazu beitragen, dass mehr Frauen authentische Geburtsgeschichten hören können. Unterstütze den Podcast finanziell auf buymeacoffee.com/geburt. Zum MutterKultur Substack geht es hier entlang. Den Geburtsgeschichten Instagram Kanal findest du hier. Folge direkt herunterladen

Mona erfährt beim ersten Ultraschalltermin, dass sie mit MCDA Zwillingen schwanger ist. Also eineiige Zwillinge, die sich eine Plazenta teilen, aber zwei Fruchtblasen haben. Die Schwangerschaft verläuft vollkommen unkompliziert und Mona möchte ihre Kinder vaginal gebären. Doch die Ärzte im Krankenhaus drängen sie zur Einleitung mit der Begründung, dass ihre Kinder sonst zu groß würden und Mona die Geburt dann nicht schaffen würde. Die Einleitung zieht sich über drei Tage hinweg und schließlich stimmt Mona unter Druck einem Kaiserschnitt zu. Mona ist aktuell erneut schwanger und sucht verzweifelt nach einer Hausgeburtshebamme in Oberösterreich, die sie Anfang Dezember 2026 bei einer HBAC begleiten würde. *** Melde dich hier zum Geburtsgeschichten Newsletter an. Zur Schwangerschaftsyoga Online Videothek geht es hier entlang. Das Webinar zum Thema Kaiserschnittnarben & Narbengewebe gibt es hier. Hier kannst du eine Google Review für den Podcast schreiben und damit dazu beitragen, dass mehr Frauen authentische Geburtsgeschichten hören können. Unterstütze den Podcast finanziell auf buymeacoffee.com/geburt. Zum MutterKultur Substack geht es hier entlang. Den Geburtsgeschichten Instagram Kanal findest du hier. Folge direkt herunterladen

We're so excited to bring you another episode in our Cesarean Awareness Month series! This one was highly requested in our VBAC Link Facebook Community and we can't wait for you to hear Catherine's stories. Today's topic is all about BREECH, one of the most common reasons for cesareans. Catherine, a mom of four with a bicornuate uterus, shares her four births: a scheduled breech cesarean, a precipitous head-down HBAC, a breech CBAC, and a planned breech HBA2C that ended in a hospital transfer for a CBA2C but with a surprise breech VBA2C on the OR table!Catherine opens up about how communication can shape a birth experience just as much as the outcome, and how even intended healing experiences can have traumatic pieces to them. She shares her passion for informed breech birth, patient advocacy, consent, midwifery care, and navigating both in-hospital and out-of-hospitalbirth settings, along with the importance of emotional processing and support.Her message is a strong reminder not to settle, Women of Strength! When you understand your options, trust your body, and advocate for the care you deserve, you can move through birth feeling informed and empowered, even when things don't go as planned.Breech Without BordersThe VBAC Link Blog: The 5 Most Common Reasons for C-sectionThe VBAC Link Blog: ECV and VBACNeeded Website: Code VBAC for 20% OffThe Ultimate VBAC Prep Course for ParentsOnline VBAC Doula TrainingAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In this episode, we're sharing something a little different in honour of Caesarean Awareness Month.Zoe joins us to reflect on the birth of her first baby: a journey that began with a deeply intentional plan for a homebirth and unfolded into a caesarean after a long, steady labour at home. This isn't a VBAC story (yet), but a story from the in-between... the space where many women find themselves after a caesarean, holding both the weight of what was and the hope of what could come next.Zoe speaks openly about her preparation for birth, the experience of labouring for over 30 hours, and the moment she knew it was time to change course. She shares the powerful role of connection, intuition, and support throughout her experience, as well as her reflections on flexibility, informed decision-making, and what it means to feel at peace with a birth that didn't go to plan.This episode is a reminder that the path to a VBAC often begins here: in the processing, the integration, and the quiet rebuilding of trust in your body and your choices.From Zoe:I am a first time mamma, relationship and sex therapist, animal lover and total birth junky. Having been fascinated by birth since I was a little girl, I always looked forward to my own one day.And while I had always wanted a home birth in my garden, whenever anyone asked me about my birth plan, I always followed up with - whatever gets my baby into this world in the most natural and safe way.So I hope my story ignites courage in all its forms - courage to be intentional, courage to be informed, courage to advocate for yourself and trust your intuition and courage to therefore adapt when you feel it's right to.Because I truly believe when we are empowered AND adaptable, there is always room for nourishment, enjoyment, beauty and bliss, no matter what the journey may end up looking like.--Please join us on our journey to bringing you all kinds of VBAC stories from across the country from here on in by subscribing and following us on social media, @australianvbacstories on Instagram and Australian VBAC Stories on Facebook. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love to rate or review, and tell your friends!If you are feeling that you might benefit from mental health support after listening to our podcast, please reach out to one of the organisations below:PANDA https://panda.org.au/Gidget Foundation https://www.gidgetfoundation.org.au/COPE Australia https://www.cope.org.au/If you've experienced mistreatment or disrespectful care in your pregnancy, birth or postpartum and are seeking advocacy support, please contact one of the following organisations:Maternity Choices Australia https://www.maternitychoices.org/Maternity Consumer Network https://www.maternityconsumernetwork.org.au/Thank you for tuning in to our podcast.

April is Cesarean Awareness Month and Women of Strength, we are aware of YOU. All month long, we are bringing you VBAC stories & discussions featuring these most common reasons for cesareans:• Big babies• Failure to progress• Twins• Breech• Fetal heart tonesAnd for our CBAC and RCS mamas, we've got a special episode all about maternal assisted cesareans, so stay tuned!! In today's episode, we talk with Katie, a Certified Professional Midwife from Oregon, whose journey into midwifery began after her own VBAC. Her first birth began spontaneously at the start of COVID and ended in a cesarean with an asynclitic, sunny side up baby. Her second birth was a healing VBAC at a freestanding birth center with midwives.Her third birth at home was longer than her previous VBAC and required her to let go of expectations and trust the process. This birth ended in a successful VBAC with a shoulder dystocia, postpartum hemorrhage, and a second degree tear. We'll let you listen to the episode to find out just how big her record-setting baby was!Katie talks about just how different births can be, what it takes to become a CPM, ways to manage postpartum hemorrhage, shoulder dystocia maneuvers, safe transfer from out-of-hospital to hospital care, and recent policies that impact midwives attending VBACs. Katie reminds us to choose your birth team wisely, the mind is a powerful thing, and sometimes letting go of expectations is the only way through.VBAC Certified Doula FinderThe VBAC Link Supportive Provider ListThe Ultimate VBAC Prep Course for ParentsOnline VBAC Doula TrainingSubmit Your VBAC/CBAC StoryAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

I'm joined by Bria, who is just three months postpartum after having her HBAC — that's a homebirth after cesarean — where she birthed an almost 11-pound baby.  But her story didn't start there. With her first baby, she experienced PROM, which ultimately led to an emergency C-section. In this episode, she opens up about the fears she carried into her next pregnancy, how she intentionally worked through them, and the ways God met her in both of her birth experiences. We also get into some super practical and honestly fascinating logistics — like what it actually looks like to rent an Airbnb for a homebirth, something so many women are curious about but don't always hear discussed. This conversation is going to encourage you, ground you, and remind you that you are not alone — and that God is present in every part of your birth story. Support the Show & Connect with Aly   Get your FREE download of Finding Joy in Pregnancy and Birth E-book when you sign up to be a monthly supporter of the podcast- https://peacefulhomebirth.thrivecart.com/phsupport/    SHORT STORY Box and FREE Styling Fee- https://shortstorybox.com/referral/aly8995   Homebirth Hub + Lifetime Access to PHC- peacefulhomebirth.com/homebirthhub   IG- @peacefulhomebirth   Facebook Group- https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1D3VuQe4wb/     Other ways to support the mission of Peaceful Homebirth:   Araza- Get 15% off paleo certified beauty that heals with code PEACEFULHOMEBIRTH- https://arazabeauty.com/PEACEFULHOMEBIRTH Fullscript- Highest Quality Supplements at a discount. Create your profile here and get 10% off - https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/amcclain1689257819 $20 off a Yoto: https://refer.yotoplay.com/u7l7c!1b70359b00!a?locale=en Temp drop- 5% off https://tempdrop.refr.cc/default/u/aly001?s=sp&t=cp    

Her first baby was born via a necessary emergency C-section — the kind of birth that leaves you grateful everyone is alive… and yet quietly shaken. Years later, during her fifth pregnancy — a surprise — she sat in a doctor's office where abortion was casually implied as an option. In this conversation, she shares how she moved from emergency C-section to midwife-led homebirth… how biblical and mental preparation transformed her labors… and why postpartum care is not optional — especially after walking through postpartum anxiety. Connect with Corey: coreyczer@gmail.com Join us for the 3 Week Peaceful Homebirth Intensive starting March 18th! peacefulhomebirth.com/phintensive  Support the Show & Connect with Aly   Get your FREE download of Finding Joy in Pregnancy and Birth E-book when you sign up to be a monthly supporter of the podcast- https://peacefulhomebirth.thrivecart.com/phsupport/    Homebirth Hub + Lifetime Access to PHC- peacefulhomebirth.com/homebirthhub   IG- @peacefulhomebirth   Facebook Group- https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1D3VuQe4wb/     Other ways to support the mission of Peaceful Homebirth:   Araza- Get 15% off paleo certified beauty that heals with code PEACEFULHOMEBIRTH- https://arazabeauty.com/PEACEFULHOMEBIRTH Fullscript- Highest Quality Supplements at a discount. Create your profile here and get 10% off - https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/amcclain1689257819 $20 off a Yoto: https://refer.yotoplay.com/u7l7c!1b70359b00!a?locale=en Temp drop- 5% off https://tempdrop.refr.cc/default/u/aly001?s=sp&t=cp    

At the end of her first pregnancy, Celine's plans for the birth unraveled. Her baby was breech, and the natural birth she had envisioned was replaced with a scheduled cesarean. Though the surgery itself wasn't traumatic, it shook her confidence. She was left wrestling with painful questions: Why didn't my baby turn? Is my body broken? Her healing began in the presence of women who believed deeply in birth and in her. Their unwavering faith helped her reclaim her own. When she became pregnant again, Celine chose a different path. She planned a home birth, supported by a midwife and doula, and consciously turned away from the fear that so often surrounds VBAC. When labor came, it came swiftly. Before the midwife could arrive, Celine birthed her baby in the quiet of her own bathroom, immersed in warm water, guided by instinct alone. The experience was powerful, psychedelic, and profoundly redemptive. She did not just give birth that day. She reclaimed herself. If you love the show, I would greatly appreciate a review on  Spotify or Apple Podcasts!  Follow me on Instagram @healingbirth Do you have a birth story you'd like to share on the podcast, or would like to otherwise connect? I love to hear from you! Send me a note at contactus@healingbirth.net Intro / Outro music: Dreams by Markvard Podcast cover photo by Karina Jensen @karinajensenphoto

Send a textOriginally from the USA and now based in Canberra, Shelby is a rebirthing breath worker, yoga teacher, and mother of three. In this open and reflective conversation, she shares her birth imprint, her experience of neurodivergence, and how pain and trauma shaped her early births.Her first birth at the birth centre included a shoulder dystocia, 3B tear, major postpartum haemorrhage, retained placenta requiring surgery, transfusions, and a later prolapse. Her second began with prodromal labour and ended in an emergency caesarean.During her third pregnancy, Shelby realised she didn't fully trust birth — and she was no longer able to return to the birth centre due to her previous experiences. As labour began, she chose to stay home and see how things unfolded, setting up her birth pool and ultimately birthing her baby there before transferring to hospital with concerns of postpartum haemorrhage.Links:(Instagram) Shelby Trevillian | RBM Breathwork • RPYT 500 • Somatic CoachSupport the show@homebirthstoriesaustralia Support the show by buying us a coffee! Please be advised that this podcast may contain explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.The information, statistics, and research presented in this podcast are for informational purposes only and are not intended to constitute or replace medical or midwifery advice. All information discussed can be found online and is provided in the links in the show notes. It is always recommended to conduct your own research and make informed decisions. We advise you to discuss any topics or concerns with your healthcare provider. While we strive to incorporate the most up-to-date research in our episodes, we do not warrant or guarantee the accuracy of the information discussed on the show.

Allison Champ is a mama of three and a VBAC Link Certified VBAC Doula serving families in the Dayton, Ohio area. Her first birth was an induced, epidural vaginal delivery with a premature manual removal of the placenta, which required a uterine scraping procedure. Allison, Lily & Paige chat about that third stage of labor and what is/isn't evidence based. Her second pregnancy began as a planned home birth but changed after a 20-week placenta previa diagnosis. Following multiple significant bleeds, she delivered by cesarean at 34 weeks, where placenta accreta was discovered. Allison walks us through what accreta is and what her doctor did to save her from having a hysterectomy. Her baby spent one week in the NICU and Allison shares how tough it was to not be able to go home to her toddler due to COVID.  For her third pregnancy, Allison planned a home birth (HBAC) with co-care. She had a fast labor, a surprise gender (boy!), and a shoulder dystocia that was smoothly resolved by her team. Her girls were right by her side taking pictures with their Polaroid cameras and cheering their mama on. Allison wraps up her episode by saying how each of her very different births have made her a better doula. She is thankful that the tough moments have helped her savor the sweet ones even more.Keywords: induction, cesarean, NICU, VBAC prep, co-care, placenta accreta, placenta previa, advocacy, third stage management Allison's Doula WebsiteVBAC Certified Doula FinderThe VBAC Link Supportive Provider ListThe Ultimate VBAC Prep Course for ParentsOnline VBAC Doula TrainingSubmit Your VBAC/CBAC StorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In this episode, listener Georgia shares her birth experience and how hypnobirthing helped her feel calm, informed, and in control as she planned her HBAC. We chat about preparation, support, and the importance of following your instincts during labour. A really grounding and reassuring birth story.Resources & Linkso

In dieser Folge wird der Tod eines Babies kurz nach der Geburt erwähnt. Die Geschichte dieser Geburt gibt es in Folge 171 zu hören. Die Gründerin vom Geburtsgeschichten Podcast Thea Maillard erzählt in dieser Folge - zusammen mit Co-Host Sarita, die bei der Geburt als Doula dabei war - von ihrer Hausgeburt nach Kaiserschnitt (HBAC). Die Folge zu Theas erster Geburt kannst du dir hier anhören und die zum ersten Wochenbett hier. Saritas wundervolle Arbeit als Doula und Fotografin findest du auf ihrer Webseite und auf Instagram. Die Unterstützung von Sarita, Eva, Andrea Surek, Hebamme "Peggy" und Margarete Wana hat dazu beigetragen, dass diese Geburt sicher, bestärkend und kraftvoll war - ein riesengroßes DANKESCHÖN an sie alle. Und ein besonderer Dank an Anne für ihre Freundschaft. Das Andenken an Baby Charlotte ist die Motivation und die Kraft hinter diesem Podcast. *** Zur Schwangerschaftsyoga Online Videothek geht es hier entlang. Hier kannst du eine Google Review für den Podcast schreiben und damit dazu beitragen, dass mehr Frauen authentische Geburtsgeschichten hören können. Unterstütze den Podcast finanziell auf buymeacoffee.com/geburt. Zum MutterKultur Substack geht es hier entlang. Den Geburtsgeschichten Instagram Kanal findest du hier. Folge direkt herunterladen

In this episode, I sit down with Kelsey, a Canadian mum of three now living in Newcastle, NSW, who walks us through her deeply contrasting birth experiences — from a marathon first labour, to a premature birth affected by pre-eclampsia, and finally, her powerful HBAC.Kelsey's story is a reminder that birth doesn't follow a straight line. Each pregnancy asked something new of her, and each birth required its own kind of strength.Her first baby arrived after more than 40 hours of labour, beginning at 40+5.After labouring for 24 hours she was still only 1 cm dilated.Her baby was posterior, her waters broke naturally, she eventually accepted an epidural, and after 48 hours of labour she had a vaginal birth — but her baby was taken to special care due to a low baseline heart rate and being born “floppy.”Kelsey's second pregnancy brought a new challenge: pre-eclampsia.Her blood pressure spiked, and she was induced at 33 weeks.Her baby spent two weeks in special care. This was a different experience, one that required patience and resiliance that was different to her first postpartum experience This experience planted the seed for something different the next time, a birth where she felt supported, informed, and safe.With her third baby, Kelsey planned a HBAC right at the last minute at 33 weeks. She always wanted to have a VBAC, but realised if she wanted to give this her best shot, her choice would be at home. She was able to connect with a midwife she felt comfortable with and got her husband on board, after watching the Birth Time movie with together.This time, she felt grounded, prepared, and empowered — and she went on to achieve her dream of a HBAC at home, bringing her baby into the world surrounded by safety, warmth and support.Kelsey credits much of her confidence and preparation to the incredible birth resources she leaned on, including:⭐ Her own knowing and intuition⭐ The Great Birth Rebellion Podcast⭐ The VBAC Homebirth Stories Podcast⭐ Birth Time (the documentary)⭐ Hypnobirthing tools & educationThese helped her understand her options, challenge the narratives she'd been given, and prepare herself emotionally and mentally for a different birth experience.Enjoy this episode! More from Ashley:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The VBAC Village⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Insta: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@ashleylwinning⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.ashleywinning.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ VBAC Homebirth Support ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Group here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Love the podcast? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy me a⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ coffeeDisclaimer: The VBAC Homebirth Stories Podcast is for educational and inspirational purposes only. The stories and opinions shared are personal experiences and should not be considered medical advice. Every birth journey is unique, and we encourage you to research, trust your intuition, and consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making decisions about your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care.

Send us a textIn this episode, Emma, a mum from Western Australia, shares her two very different birth experiences.During her first pregnancy, Emma received GP shared care and went in for reduced movements late in pregnancy. A scan suggested her baby was measuring large, and she was induced. After a long pushing phase, she birthed her 4.59kg baby via caesarean.For her second birth, Emma chose a completely different model of care — working with a private midwife and planning a homebirth after caesarean (HBAC). She reflects on how different the care, support, and overall experience were the second time around. After her daughter was born at home, they were transferred to hospital due to breathing difficulties, where her baby received CPAP support.Emma also opens up about her breastfeeding journeys with both babies — how unique each experience was, and what she learned along the way.Links:Great Birth Rebellion Podcast Support the show@homebirthstoriesaustralia Support the show by buying us a coffee! Please be advised that this podcast may contain explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.The information, statistics, and research presented in this podcast are for informational purposes only and are not intended to constitute or replace medical or midwifery advice. All information discussed can be found online and is provided in the links in the show notes. It is always recommended to conduct your own research and make informed decisions. We advise you to discuss any topics or concerns with your healthcare provider. While we strive to incorporate the most up-to-date research in our episodes, we do not warrant or guarantee the accuracy of the information discussed on the show.

Sponsor: Use code BIRTHHOUR for up to 40% off your first order (including their already discounted plans and subscriptions) at thisisneeded.com. The Birth Hour Links: Know Your Options Online Childbirth Course (code 100OFF for $100 OFF!) Beyond the First Latch Course (comes free with KYO course) Access archived episodes and a private Facebook group via Patreon! 

In this episode, I'm sharing Sofia's incredible birth story, and how God provided me with truly everything I've ever wanted in a birth. After two very different births with my boys (one ending in an unexpected C-section and another full of surrender and faith), this home birth felt like everything coming full circle. From the moment labor began to the second I held her in my arms, I could see God's hand over every single detail.You'll hear all about the final days leading up to Sofia's birth, when I was trying to balance faith and patience while waiting for labor to begin. I share how I prepared my heart and home, the ways I sensed God guiding me through my fears, and even how my midwife's gentle encouragement helped me rest and trust His timing. I also walk through her actual birth story… including what it was like to realize things were moving fast, how supported I felt by my husband and birth team, and the calm presence that filled our home that day (even with our boys home!).This episode is full of answered prayers, quiet miracles, and reminders that God cares about every part of our story, even the smallest details of birth. Whether you're preparing for your own home birth after a C-section (HBAC), a VBAC,  hoping to experience peace after a difficult birth, or simply love hearing stories of faith and motherhood, I hope Sofia's story encourages you the way it has encouraged me. I feel incredibly grateful to be able to share it with you.Links Mentioned:- Read the full shownotes: https://elizabethmccravy.com/319- Home birth and VBAC resource guide (with links): https://elizabethmccravy.com/birth/- Shop our Showit Website Templates (use code BBPODCAST for 10% off!): https://elizabethmccravy.com/showit-website-templates/  - Join me inside the Podcast Success Blueprint: https://elizabethmccravy.com/psb - Join me inside Booked Out Designer: https://elizabethmccravy.com/bod  - Want the insider scoop? Join my Free Facebook community: https://elizabethmccravy.com/facebook  - Connect with Elizabeth on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethmccravy/Thanks to our sponsor, Christian Healthcare Ministries! CHM is a faith-based, budget-friendly alternative to health insurance— at half the cost. And, you can join anytime! My family has trusted CHM for 5+ years through multiple pregnancies and health needs. With CHM, you'll save money and know that 100% of eligible bills are shared when medical needs arise. Learn more at elizabethmccravy.com/CHM Over my 9 years of business, I have learned some financial skills the hard way and a few years ago, I developed an an 8 step process I go through at the end of each month. This process helps me know how my business is doing financially, pay myself well and allocate money for things like taxes and expenses. And, it's yours for FREE at https://elizabethmccravy.com/profit

About her VBA2C, Chloe says, “I've been dreaming of my VBAC for 8 years. When my HBAC turned into a scheduled CBAC, I wasn't even sure I'd get the option to have a VBA2C. It took a lot of planning & hard work & I knew as a first time labouring mom that it would be a longer labor but I completely underestimated just how long… Dreams came true New Years Eve as fireworks went off & my husband & I welcomed our daughter!”Chloe's first birth was a scheduled Cesarean due to a partial placenta previa. For her second, she was planning an HBAC, but after going overdue with no signs of labor, concerns about her baby's size, and a CPD diagnosis, she had another scheduled Cesarean. For her VBA2C baby, Chloe went all in. She connected with supportive providers, leaned into physical prep, and was so inspired from other women's stories on The VBAC Link Podcast.Chloe labored hard for almost 3 days and was progressing veryyy slowly. Though it wasn't what she thought she'd want at 3 cm, she got an epidural and AROM which ended up being incredibly helpful! Her midwife even said that she pushed as though she had delivered five babies. Take that, CPD!

In this episode, I'm sharing one of the most personal journeys I've ever shared: the path from having a C-section with my second baby to experiencing a home birth with my third, our sweet Sofia Kate McCravy. Just seven months after my C-section, I found myself pregnant again, facing a decision I never expected to make so soon: Would I try for a VBAC, schedule a repeat C-section, or try for the home birth I had always quietly longed for (but felt unlikely)?I walk you through the ups and downs of that decision-making process (and yes, there's a business lesson in here), from being told “no” by multiple midwives, sitting in doctor's offices feeling dismissed and even shamed, and ultimately learning how to advocate for myself and dig into the research around VBACs (vaginal birth after cesarean) and HBACs (home birth after cesarean). I also share how journaling, prayer, and conversations with supportive providers helped me process both my fears and my desires. And I'll tell you about the persistence it took (17 inquiries later!) to find the right midwife who believed in me and my ability to have this birth.If you're curious about home birth, considering a VBAC, or simply love hearing honest, real birth experiences, I hope my journey encourages you. And if you're a business listener who found this episode in your feed, stick around. You'll be surprised at how many lessons from pregnancy and birth apply directly to entrepreneurship, resilience, and trusting your instincts.Links Mentioned:- Read the full shownotes: https://elizabethmccravy.com/318- Home birth resource guide (with links): https://elizabethmccravy.com/home-birth-resource-guide-vbac-hbac/- Shop our Showit Website Templates (use code BBPODCAST for 10% off!): https://elizabethmccravy.com/showit-website-templates/  - Join me inside the Podcast Success Blueprint: https://elizabethmccravy.com/psb - Join me inside Booked Out Designer: https://elizabethmccravy.com/bod  - Want the insider scoop? Join my Free Facebook community: https://elizabethmccravy.com/facebook  - Connect with Elizabeth on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethmccravy/Thanks to our sponsor, Christian Healthcare Ministries! CHM is a faith-based, budget-friendly alternative to health insurance— at half the cost. And, you can join anytime! My family has trusted CHM for 5+ years through multiple pregnancies and health needs. With CHM, you'll save money and know that 100% of eligible bills are shared when medical needs arise. Learn more at elizabethmccravy.com/CHM Over my 9 years of business, I have learned some financial skills the hard way and a few years ago, I developed an an 8 step process I go through at the end of each month. This process helps me know how my business is doing financially, pay myself well and allocate money for things like taxes and expenses. And, it's yours for FREE at https://elizabethmccravy.com/profit

In this episode, I share a short, practical guide to finding a midwife in Australia to support your HBAC or VBAC homebirth. Starting the search can feel overwhelming, but there are trusted pathways and communities to help you connect with the right support.Here's what we cover: ⭐ How to begin your search for a midwife in your local area ⭐ The role of Homebirth Australia as a representative organisation, and how it connects with state groups like Homebirth Queensland, Homebirth NSW, and Homebirth Victoria ⭐ How to use Facebook groups such as Homebirth Australia, Homebirth Queensland, and the VBAC Homebirth Support Group to find midwives, birth workers, and supportive communities ⭐ Why reaching out to a local doula can be an important first step when planning a homebirth ⭐ How the HBAC Homebirth Stories Podcast and support networks can help you feel connected and informedI also share how I can personally support you through Power Hour sessions, virtual pregnancy support, and both in-person and online guidance to help you prepare for a confident, empowered birth.Enjoy this episode! More from Ashley:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The VBAC Village⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Insta: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@ashleylwinning⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.ashleywinning.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ VBAC Homebirth Support ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Group here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Love the podcast? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy me a⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ coffeeDisclaimer: The VBAC Homebirth Stories Podcast is for educational and inspirational purposes only. The stories and opinions shared are personal experiences and should not be considered medical advice. Every birth journey is unique, and we encourage you to research, trust your intuition, and consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making decisions about your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care.

Send us a textIn this month's Q&A, we start with a big one: What are your biggest fears in life? (Besides snakes and spiders, of course!) Then we dive into your thoughtful community questions, including:Homebirth vs. family pushback: My sister is a labor & delivery nurse, my family isn't supportive, and my MIL has no boundaries. What should I do?Breastfeeding oversupply: I had a major oversupply with my first baby—will it be worse or the same with my next?Birth interventions: In my first birth, my midwife used hands-on pushing techniques and I was given continuous antibiotics. Were these necessary?In the extended version of today's episode available on Patreon or Apple subscriptions, we answer additional questions on:preparing for a long home birth after a cesarean (HBAC) and how to avoid hospital transfer, "failure to progress" in a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), whether we consider water birth to be a birth intervention, and if it is ok to sleep on your back in pregnancy. Finally, in quickies, we discuss: the best HypnoBirthing class (ha), preventing perineal tearing, cycle length & gestation, our current favorite podcasts, breast reductions and breastfeeding, posterior babies, pushing length and positions, and a favorite item in our homes.  Thanks, everyone, and call us any time at 802-GET-DOWN! That's 802-438-3696.Watch this episode in full video format on YouTube.**********Our sponsors, Patreon, and contact info below: Needed

Alexandra's story begins abroad in Italy, where she goes into labor around 25 weeks while pregnant with twins and delivers via emergency C-section. Devastatingly, one twin survives the ensuing NICU stay, while the other does not. Back in the United States later, Alexandra is thrilled to become pregnant again. She knows she wants a VBAC and achieves it in a hospital setting, although the experience includes both obstetric violence and unnecessary interventions. During her third pregnancy, Alexandra becomes determined to have a positive, trauma-free birth experience. She hires homebirth midwives and comes achingly close to delivering at home. However, she transfers to the hospital at the last minute out of fear and gives birth just an hour later. Her fourth birth, which took place only four and a half months before the time of this recording, was finally the healing experience she had dreamed of for so long. Today, Alexandra is a devoted mother of four who passionately thrives on all things related to birth and motherhood. She is a strong advocate and champion for well-informed pregnancies, holding a firm belief that every woman should feel fully empowered, secure, and supported throughout their pregnancy journey and childbirth experience. You can connect with Alexandra via her website and on Instagram @birthrightwellnesscollectivenc If you love the show, I would greatly appreciate a review on  Spotify or Apple Podcasts! Follow me on Instagram @healingbirth Do you have a birth story you'd like to share on the podcast, or would like to otherwise connect? I love to hear from you! Send me a note at contactus@healingbirth.net Check out the website for lots of other birth related offerings, and personalized support: www.healingbirth.net Intro / Outro music: Dreams by Markvard Podcast cover photo by Karina Jensen @karinajensenphoto

Emily's first pregnancy was surprise twins! In some places, this would have severely limited her options for where and with whom she could give birth. Fortunately, Emily found a midwife who was willing to attend a twin birth at home.  After an uneventful pregnancy, she went into labor at home, but due to high blood pressure readings, the decision was made to transfer to the hospital. Once there, she was given no option other than a C-section, and the hospital staff was unsupportive and even unkind about her attempted home birth. Despite this first experience, Emily knew that home was where she felt safest giving birth. When she became pregnant again, she found a different midwife who helped her process the trauma of her first birth and supported her dream of having a home birth. If you love the show, I would greatly appreciate a review on  Spotify or Apple Podcasts!  Follow me on Instagram @healingbirth Do you have a birth story you'd like to share on the podcast, or would like to otherwise connect? I love to hear from you! Send me a note at contactus@healingbirth.net Check out the website for lots of other birth related offerings, and personalized support: www.healingbirth.net Intro / Outro music: Dreams by Markvard Podcast cover photo by Karina Jensen @karinajensenphoto

In this episode, I sit down with Tiffanie, a mother of two from Mt Isa, who shares her raw and powerful birth stories—two very different journeys that shaped her into the woman and mother she is today.Tiffanie's first pregnancy was planned as a freebirth, but at 38+4 weeks she developed preeclampsia so severe she was losing her vision for up to ten minutes just from standing up. When she presented at the hospital, doctors told her she was on the edge of eclampsia—her liver and kidneys were shutting down—and a caesarean was her safest option. What followed was an incredibly tough start to motherhood, with Tiffanie sent to ICU and separated from her newborn for 30 hours due to a covid patient being in ICU at the same time.Her second pregnancy, however, was completely different. Choosing a wild pregnancy with just one ultrasound at 21 weeks, Tiffanie leaned into her intuition, knowledge, and body wisdom. Determined not to repeat her first experience, she focused on prevention and balance:Following the Brewer's Diet with an emergency protocolUsing Celtic salt shots and water to regulate her blood pressureStaying strong and active with F45 training throughout pregnancyAt 42+3 weeks, Tiffanie went into spontaneous labour and birthed her baby at home in a beautiful freebirth. Her baby was born sunny side up, and with the loving support of her husband and sister-in-law Sarah by her side, Tiffanie welcomed her baby into the world on her own terms.This episode is a powerful reminder of the strength it takes to reclaim trust in your body after trauma, and the importance of preparation, nutrition, and support when navigating birth after preeclampsia.Enjoy this podcast episode!More from Ashley:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The VBAC Village⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Insta: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@ashleylwinning⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.ashleywinning.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ VBAC Homebirth Support ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Group here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Love the podcast? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy me a⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ coffeeDisclaimer: The VBAC Homebirth Stories Podcast is for educational and inspirational purposes only. The stories and opinions shared are personal experiences and should not be considered medical advice. Every birth journey is unique, and we encourage you to research, trust your intuition, and consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making decisions about your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care.

The Homebirth Midwife Podcast is back! Sarah McClure and Charli Zarosinski share the story of Charli's third birth — a joyful and empowering home water birth of her daughter, Daphne. Charli reflects on her more relaxed mindset during pregnancy, the humorous and sweet moments of early labor, and the calm, celebratory environment created by her birth team. She describes moving through labor with strong support, natural progression, and firm encouragement from Sarah, culminating in an immediate and powerful emotional connection with her baby. The episode highlights the intimacy, autonomy, and unique care possible in home birth midwifery, leaving Charli grateful to close her childbearing chapter on such a high note. If you like what you get here, you'll like our online childbirth education course even more. It's a more detailed look at the stages of labor, how to cope, and what to do along the way to set yourself up for success. It also shows partners what to expect from their point of view and what they can do to support you in labor. Stay Connected With Us! Website: https://hearthandhomemidwifery.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/HearthandHomeMidwifery Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HearthandHomeMidwifery YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hearthandhomemidwifery1206 The Homebirth Midwife Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of midwifery, medicine, or other professional health care services. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast are at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Miracle story ahead! This episode with Carol was fascinating! God truly cares about women and the process of birth.  We are in a time in history where women are realizing the deep need to trust God over their midwife, the medical system, even their own knowledge and intuition. God wants to be invited into ever detail and moment of your birth! For the midwives out there listening, may you be encouraged that you answer to a higher power than your license, the State or the medical system. Praise Him that you are a vessel to be used by our Almighty Savior and friend.  I hope this episode encourages you as you prepare for or attend births. To God be the glory. Connect with Carol: midwyf@gmail.com  classicalmidwifery.com gentlebirths.net **Get 100Euro of off your ticket to the Classical Midwifery Conference in Crete, Greece when you use the code "PODCAST" "good patient" caused her to stay quiet, go along with the system, and ultimately watch her dreams for birth slip away. But this time? She chose a different path. Through my program, Haley prepared for an HBAC — a homebirth after cesarean — and not only did she have a beautiful, redemptive homebirth, but she did it with the full understanding and wisdom of both sides of the coin — as a nurse and as a mama standing in her authority. We also dive into the complicated emotions that can come up when you work inside the medical system, but choose something different for yourself. Her story starts with her waters breaking early — what the hospital often labels as "premature rupture of membranes" — and how that moment could've easily led her down the same old cascade of interventions… but because she was prepared and supported, she stayed home, stayed confident, and brought her baby into the world in the way God designed. It's such a powerful conversation, especially if you're navigating fears after a c-section or feeling tension between your job in healthcare and your personal birth choices.   LAST DAY TO APPLY FOR THE DIVINE DESIGN HOMEBIRTH RETREAT: Kissimmee, FL  Sept 5th-8th, 2025 CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS & TO APPLY   if you're looking for ongoing support and mentorship, I'd love for you to apply to the Peaceful Homebirth Collective — my signature group coaching program where we go deep into radical responsibility, brain rewiring, and faith-based preparation for birth and postpartum. If you're ready to do birth differently and walk this journey in a powerful, Holy-Spirit-led community, the Collective is for you. You can apply now at peacefulhomebirth.com/collective.   If today's conversation resonated with you and you're looking for deeper support than a standard homebirth course can offer — real-time coaching, a Christ-centered community, and mentorship from me inside a safe, sacred space — I want to personally invite you to apply for the Peaceful Homebirth Collective. CLICK HERE TO TRY FOR 7 DAYS FREE Connect with Aly: IG- @peacefulhomebirth FB Group- www.facebook.com/groups/peacefulhomebirth Grab your Prenatal Wellness Protocol

Some of the more common FAQs we get as we see the cesarean rate rise have to do with planning VBACs- so here we are, taking a look at VBACs! In this episode we explore vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), share some alternative perspectives and our approach to supporting clients. We'll address common fears like uterine rupture and offer holistic preparation tips—physical, emotional, nutritional, and mental—emphasizing the value of strong support and informed decision-making. 00:00 Introduction to Kelly and Tiffany's Holistic Health Podcast01:08 Diving into Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC)01:54 Encouragement for Women: Just Start05:29 The Importance of Avoiding Primary C-Sections08:55 Midwifery Perspective on VBAC17:52 Understanding Uterine Rupture Risks22:57 VBAC Success Rates and Supportive Care26:55 VBAC and Close Pregnancy Spacing27:45 Provider Policies and Patient Desires29:03 Hospital Restrictions and VBAC Options32:34 Interviewing Providers for VBAC39:18 Holistic Preparation for VBAC40:57 Emotional and Mental Preparation41:52 Nutritional Support and Uterine Toning44:18 Reviewing Previous Birth Records47:34 Resources and Childbirth Education50:25 Supporting the Show and CommunityLinks We Chat AboutICAN (International Cesarean Awareness Network)VBAC FactsIntro to Cesarean Recovery + Scar Mobilization + Remediation TipsOur Weekly NewsletterOur Childbirth Education Course, use code RADIANT10 for 10% offOur Monthly MembershipBe sure to subscribe to the podcast to catch every episode. Follow us on Instagram for extra education and antics between episodes at: @beautifulonemidwifery

Haley came to me after experiencing a traumatic c-section with her first baby, nearly ten years ago — a birth where, in her own words, being the "good patient" caused her to stay quiet, go along with the system, and ultimately watch her dreams for birth slip away. But this time? She chose a different path. Through my program, Haley prepared for an HBAC — a homebirth after cesarean — and not only did she have a beautiful, redemptive homebirth, but she did it with the full understanding and wisdom of both sides of the coin — as a nurse and as a mama standing in her authority. We also dive into the complicated emotions that can come up when you work inside the medical system, but choose something different for yourself. Her story starts with her waters breaking early — what the hospital often labels as "premature rupture of membranes" — and how that moment could've easily led her down the same old cascade of interventions… but because she was prepared and supported, she stayed home, stayed confident, and brought her baby into the world in the way God designed. It's such a powerful conversation, especially if you're navigating fears after a c-section or feeling tension between your job in healthcare and your personal birth choices.   LAST DAY TO APPLY FOR THE DIVINE DESIGN HOMEBIRTH RETREAT: Kissimmee, FL  Sept 5th-8th, 2025 CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS & TO APPLY   if you're looking for ongoing support and mentorship, I'd love for you to apply to the Peaceful Homebirth Collective — my signature group coaching program where we go deep into radical responsibility, brain rewiring, and faith-based preparation for birth and postpartum. If you're ready to do birth differently and walk this journey in a powerful, Holy-Spirit-led community, the Collective is for you. You can apply now at peacefulhomebirth.com/collective.     If today's conversation resonated with you and you're looking for deeper support than a standard homebirth course can offer — real-time coaching, a Christ-centered community, and mentorship from me inside a safe, sacred space — I want to personally invite you to apply for the Peaceful Homebirth Collective. It's where women just like you are preparing not only for a beautiful homebirth, but for transformation in their hearts, homes, and families.  CLICK HERE TO APPLY FOR PHC Connect with Aly: IG- @peacefulhomebirth FB Group- www.facebook.com/groups/peacefulhomebirth Grab your Prenatal Wellness Protocol

Send us a textWelcome to the June Q&A with Cynthia & Trisha. This month we kick things off with a conversation about a midwife who dropped her client in early labor because her HBAC labor was taking too long to get going--as you can imagine, we have a lot to say about this! Next we take your questions:One mom writes about her 3rd attempt at a homebirth after two hospital transfers and wonders if it is ok to keep her birth plans from her family with whom she is very close with. We also answer:My midwife told me I should do a cervical check at 36 weeks to help understand the baby's position and offer recommendations based on the findings. Is this really necessary? And, if a baby isn't breathing after a minute of being born and is still attached to the placenta, do babies need to be stimulated or is intervention required?In the extended episode, available on Patreon, we discuss vaginal birth with a nuchal hand, scheduling C-sections for planned VBAC at 40 week, and vaginal birth after a shoulder dystocia.Finally in quickies, we touch on spray tans while breastfeeding, induction vs cesarean, elastic nipples & pumping, third labors, length of umbilical cords, and our favorite seasons and candy (except Cynthia doesn't eat candy).**********Our sponsors:Silverette Nursing Cups -- Soothe and heal sore nipples with 925 silver nursing cups.Postpartum Soothe -- Herbs and padsicles to heal and comfort.Needed -- Our favorite nutritional products for before, during, and after pregnancy. Use this link to save 20%DrinkLMNT -- Purchase LMNT with this unique link and get a FREE sample packENERGYbits--the superfood every mother needs for pregnancy, postpartum, and breastfeedingPrimally Pure: From soil to skin, primally pure products are made with down-to-earth ingredients that feel and smell like heaven for the skinUse promo code: DOWNTOBIRTH for all sponsors.Connect with us on Patreon for our exclusive content.Email Contact@DownToBirthShow.comInstagram @downtobirthshowCall us at 802-GET-DOWN Watch the full videos of all our episodes on YouTube! Work with Cynthia: 203-952-7299 HypnoBirthingCT.com Work with Trisha: 734-649-6294 Please remember we don't provide medical advice. Speak to your licensed medical provider for all your healthcare matters.

Vanessa was born and raised in Brazil, a country with sky-high cesarean rates. Moving to the US inspired her to pursue her doula career, even before she became pregnant herself. Vanessa's own birth experiences were very different. Her first birth was a Cesarean after a birth center transfer. While it was medically necessary, it was very unexpected and traumatic. After a lot of processing and birth trauma therapy, she was ready to give birth again. Vanessa pursued a home birth for her second birth that was wonderfully straightforward and beautiful, surrounded by the people she loved most!She now lives just outside of Boston with her husband, two daughters and her mother. Her passion is to support other immigrant women in her community navigate the US healthcare system, and to know they have options when it comes to childbirth, especially when it comes to VBAC. Vanessa's WebsiteVanessa's InstagramVanessa's FacebookNeeded Website: Code VBAC20 for 20% OffCoterie Diapers - Use code VBAC20 for 20% OffHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsOnline VBAC Doula TrainingSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In this episode, we sit down with Alex Kelly—educator, mother, and holistic parenting advocate—to talk about her journey through cesarean and home birth VBAC, navigating severe pregnancy complications, and supporting a failure-to-thrive baby through breastfeeding challenges and supplementing. Alex shares how her background in holistic dentistry and integrative health shaped her parenting and recovery, and why she's passionate about helping parents trust both natural and conventional approaches to care.What You'll Learn: • The importance of laboring before a cesarean vs. scheduled cesarean • Alex's experience with postpartum hypertension and hospital readmission • How sleep-breathing disorders and tongue/lip ties can affect children • The role of nutrition, baby aspirin, and L-arginine in pregnancy • Why baby position matters during labor (hello, long pushing stage!) • Insights into holistic dentistry and navigating conventional medicine with balanceAlex Kelly is passionate about educating parents to parent in a naturally-minded way, without letting it cause unnecessary fear or anxiety. Raised by a holistic dentist and a first-generation American mom, she blends holistic and conventional wisdom in her approach to parenting, pregnancy, and health. Alex shares openly about her C-section and HBAC experiences, breastfeeding journey, and commitment to making informed, empowered choices for herself and her family.Links and Resources Mentioned: • Instagram: @thenaturalmindedmama • Website: thenaturalmindedmama.com • Dr. Hal Stewart (Alex's father) – Expert in sleep breathing disorders and oral tiesIf Alex's story resonated with you, tag us and share your takeaways on Instagram! Have a story of your own you'd love to share on the podcast? Reach out—we'd love to hear from you.Connect with Us:@sophiabirth@bayareahomebirth@bornwildmidwiferyStay Wild

”This VBAC has changed who I am as a woman.” Proactive preparation matters in birth!!While we don't want to obsess about it in an unhealthy way, prep work can make a huge difference in your birth experience. Chelsea is an amazing example of how that prep pays off. After a very long, exhausting 40+hr labor and Cesarean birth, Chelsea knew she needed a different experience the next time around. Chelsea took charge of what she could during her second pregnancy. She did deep internal work, vigorously prepped her mind and body, educated herself, and invested in an empowering birth team. Her intuition led Chelsea to birth at home, and it was a completely different experience from her first in so many powerful ways!Chelsea's Podcast: Growing Up Raising UsNeeded Website: Code VBAC20 for 20% OffCoterie Diapers - Use code VBAC20 for 20% OffHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today's interview with Zoe is one of my favorites. Her vulnerability and story telling kept me captivated for the entirety of the interview. She inspires me daily, in her authenticity, strength & courage to be herself and stand for what she believes in. Tune in to hear how she went from cesarean delivery with her first, to an HBAC with her second -to beating her cancer diagnosis & building a flourishing suncream company all while mommin' and homesteading. Check out the links below on how to connect with Zoe further ❤️

Jackie had been planning a home birth for her first baby, but at 35 weeks, she received the shocking diagnosis of a placental abruption. This led to an emergency cesarean, a NICU stay, and years of processing why it had happened to her. (You can listen to Jackie's full first birth story in her initial appearance on this podcast, here.) After enough time had passed, Jackie felt the desire for another child, found the courage to get pregnant again, and planned for another home birth. This time, she got it. If you love the show, I would greatly appreciate a review on  Spotify or Apple Podcasts!  Follow me on Instagram @healingbirth Do you have a birth story you'd like to share on the podcast, or would like to otherwise connect? I love to hear from you! Send me a note at contactus@healingbirth.net Check out the website for lots of other birth related offerings, and personalized support: www.healingbirth.net Intro / Outro music: Dreams by Markvard Podcast cover photo by Karina Jensen @karinajensenphoto

I have previously said that I would love to have a homebirth after cesarean (HBAC) if I had a third baby. Well, I've changed my mind and I'll go over why in this episode. I am an advocate for choice and informed consent. I believe everyone has a right to weigh the risks and benefits and decide what type of birth is best for them. Whether that be a hospital VBAC, birth center, or homebirth. There is no right or wrong way to give birth, only the way you feel safest and most supported.Text Hannah! First 3 Steps to VBAC Guide: https://www.thehannahgill.com/firststeps Quiz - Is Your Provider VBAC Supportive?: https://thehannahgill.com/quiz Doula VBAC and Repeat Cesarean Guide: https://www.thehannahgill.com/newdoulatips

We are celebrating a HUGE milestone over here: 400 episodes of The VBAC Link Podcast! Beginning as a phonecall in Target from Julie Francom to Meagan Heaton in 2018, The VBAC Link Podcast now has over 1.3 million episode downloads, guests from all over the world, a management and production team, parent and doula education courses, a thriving social media platform, and a legacy of stories from YOU that have allowed VBAC to be accessible more than ever before. Your stories have provided the inspiration and education to show women just how many options there are when giving birth after a Cesarean. Whether it is VBAC, HBAC, CBAC, VBAMC, RCS, MAC, or anything in between, it has been a privilege to connect with you and learn from you. We love you, Women of Strength!Coterie Diapers: Use Code VBAC20 for 20% OffNeeded Website: Code VBAC20 for 20% OffHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Hello and welcome back to a brand new season of The Hypnobirthing Podcast. In today's episode I am joined by Leanne from Doula Diary as she shares her empowering HBAC story. A big thank you to Leanne for joining me! Thank you to Wild Nutrition for sponsoring this episode. For 50% off for three months, visit www.wildnutrition.com/hypnobirthing To learn more about my doula packages visit https://www.thenurturenest.co.uk/doula-services To purchase one of my courses, please visit https://www.thenurturenest.co.uk/courses If you have benefitted from this podcast and would like to say thanks, you can now buy me a coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thenurturenest View my birthy book recommendations here https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/influencer-e2ad919d  Follow me on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/the_nurture_nest/ Follow me on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/thenurturenesthypno Get 10% off your birth pool here https://go.referralcandy.com/share/JKHGBJ3 Get 10% off a BabyCare TENS Machine. USE CODE 10NURTURENEST http://babycaretens.com?afmc=46

In today's episode of The Homebirth Midwife Podcast, Sarah and Charli answer listener questions about pushing during labor and practicing birth work while pregnant. The conversation begins with a deep exploration of various techniques for pushing during labor, focusing on whether to hold one's breath ("purple pushing") or to breathe through contractions. They go on to unpack their personal experiences as midwives and mothers, sharing firsthand insights from the intersection of their profession and their maternal lives. Tune in for a warm, humorous, and informative talk that supports and educates expectant mothers through the journey of childbirth. If you like what you get here, you'll like our online childbirth education course even more. It's a more detailed look at the stages of labor, how to cope, and what to do along the way to set yourself up for success. It also shows partners what to expect from their point of view and what they can do to support you in labor. Stay Connected With Us! Website: https://hearthandhomemidwifery.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/HearthandHomeMidwifery Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HearthandHomeMidwifery YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hearthandhomemidwifery1206 The Homebirth Midwife Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of midwifery, medicine, or other professional health care services. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast are at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Johanna is a girl mama joining us today from Canada. She had an unplanned C-section with her first, an HBAC with her second, and was pregnant with her third at the time of recording! Johanna reflects on her experiences with both supportive and unsupportive care during her pregnancies. Meagan and Johanna dive into your options surrounding PROM,  the significance of intuition in decision-making, the impact of provider choices on birth outcomes, and the nuances of VBAC postpartum recovery.The VBAC Link Blog: Home Birth VBACEverything You Need for Your HBACSupportive Providers10 Signs to Switch Your ProviderWhat to Do When Your Water BreaksLabor GuideCoterie Diapers - Use code VBAC20 for 20% offHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. We have our friend Johanna with us from Canada today, and she's going to be sharing her HBAC story. So for those who may be , new to the VBAC world, or just all of the acronyms that the VBAC world has, HBAC is pronounced home birth after Cesarean. So if you are one of those who really wants to look into all of your options for birthing locations, which I encourage everyone to do, definitely listen up here. We're going to be talking about a lot of really great things including picking a provider and PROM knowing that you maybe had a provider that wasn't ideal the first time and more about HBAC. So we are going to be diving into a lot of really, really great, juicy topics. But in place our review today, Johanna and I are actually going to talk a little bit more about picking the right provider. So, Johanna, welcome to the show.Johanna: Thank you.Meagan: I am so excited for you to be with us today and so grateful that you are here to talk about this topic. Because like I was saying before we pressed record, I see daily in our community, every single day, and not even just our community, in other VBAC communities or this is weird, but people's statuses, like my friends and family's statuses on Facebook, where you type like, "Hey, I'm looking for this," or "I'm feeling very frustrated," or "I need prayers." People will seriously say, "I don't know what to do, you guys. Has anybody ever heard of VBAC?" on their own status? But especially in the VBAC groups, I see people and I just want to yell, "Hey, you over there. You're with the wrong provider" or, "Hey, you should move." That's a really hard thing because especially when I type that it can be like, oh my gosh, who is this broad telling me that I'm with the wrong provider and that I chose wrong? I'm not trying to say that. I'm not trying to say you chose wrong. Like, how dare you choose wrong? It's just like, hey, what you're telling us in this community is screaming, you're the wrong provider. So, Johanna, you , mentioned before we press record that you realized after your first birth that you were with the wrong provider. What made you realize that you were with the wrong provider? And were there signs during pregnancy that you recognized and maybe pushed away? Or was it really not something that you recognized until after? Because I know really, it can go both ways.Johanna: Yeah, I think that there were signs during the pregnancy. I mean, one of them, and I just didn't listen to my gut because you don't know what you don't know. I put too much blind faith that it was all gonna work out. But I never felt comfortable with her. I didn't have a good connection with her. I was asking a lot of questions about what I can be doing because my first birth, I really wanted to be a home birth. She basically just didn't give me very much information about what I can be doing. She sent me to your generic birth course through the hospital. Yeah. I didn't really feel like she was really invested in the outcome of my birth. I was just like another one of her patients. So I didn't feel great about that. And then when push came to shove with my birth and things weren't going great, she threw her hands up in the air and just took a step back and didn't really advocate for me or try and help me through things. So I was left with a pretty unpleasant taste in my mouth.Meagan: Yeah, I mean, exactly what you said just a minute ago. You didn't feel that she was invested in the outcome of your birth. And then it proved. It proved to be true when she just threw her arms up. So you had that experience, and you're not alone. There are so many of us out there. Me too, me included and a lot of people on The VBAC Link team included. We have all been in a similar situation where our providers, threw our hands up, weren't invested in our birth and our experience and had to go out there and seek that support that we deserved. So if there's anything we talk about on The VBAC Link, and I'm sure you've heard it, is find the right provider. I mean, seriously, you guys, I say it daily, every single day. If I'm not typing it, if I'm not voice memo-ing it, if I'm not saying it in my mind, it's find the right provider. Johanna, what would you give for tips for our listeners to find that right provider? And how did you find that right provider?Johanna: So I found my midwife that I used for my second birth and I'm actually using again for my third birth because I am 31 weeks pregnant today.Meagan: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yay.Johanna: I found her actually because when I got pregnant for the second time, the first thing I did was get a doula.Meagan: Uh-huh.Johanna: I asked her for recommendations on a VBAC friendly midwife. She had recommended this midwife. So immediately I was like, yes, I would like to meet her. When I met her, instantly, I felt so much more at ease.So I would say going with your gut. If something doesn't feel right, even if it's the tiniest thing, just look for a new provider. Just find someone where it feels right.Meagan: Yeah. I can relate to that so much because that's how I was feeling. I was searching, I was searching, I was searching. I mean, it was insane. I interviewed a lot of providers, but that's what I was searching for is that immediate like, oh, I'm in the right place. You are my person. And it took me a long time. And that sucks. It sucks that it took so long. I know that in some areas they're really rural and it's almost impossible to find that feeling. But I agree. So just as a reminder for those looking, before we get into the story, I wanted to make sure that you know to ask open-ended questions. Do not say, "Do you support VBAC? Yes or no?" Do not say, "Do you support me to go to 40 weeks? Yes or no?"Let's ask open ended questions. "How do you feel if I approach my due date and I haven't had a baby yet? How do you feel about VBAC? What is your experience with VBAC? How do you support your VBAC clients to make sure patients get the birth that they want? How do you advocate for them?"Asking these big open ended questions and then like Johanna said, diving deep. What is your heart and your gut feeling and saying? If at any point you are questioning, which I think is when people come out on social media, that is when I think they comment and they're writing, "Hey, I'm, feeling defeated. Hey, this is what my provider said." It's because they're doubting. They're questioning. That's their intuition. If that even comes into play at all, it's time to switch. It is time to switch. And first-time parents, if you are out there listening, this applies to you too, right? We have to avoid these unnecessary Cesareans which are happening all over the world. We have to follow our intuition. So that's another thing we talk about until we're blue in the face-- intuition. So follow that intuition. Ask open ended questions. Really dive in deep because your provider really can make an impact.And really, really quickly, we're going to just barely skim the surface on PROM. PROM is premature rupture of membranes. Johanna and I have both experienced it. She's two for two. I'm three for three. Maybe you won't be three for three girl. I don't know. I'm hoping you're not. Johanna: Fingers crossed. Meagan: I'm hoping you won't. But if you are, we know that it's okay. Vaginal birth still happen. But talking about providers, if you have PROM, which means your water breaks before labor begins, and just to let you know, it can take hours, even days for your body to turn over into labor after your water breaks. But if you have PROM and you don't have a supportive provider, that is right there the beginning of a fight. It shouldn't have to be a fight, but that can impact things because they want to get things going. Some providers won't even induce labor or touch you or 12 hours later they're like, "Nope, you haven't had a baby. You have to have a C-section." So yeah. So really quick Johanna, do you have any tips for our listeners who might have had PROM or may have PROM?Johanna: Yeah, it's difficult because especially when I experienced it, I mean, I experienced it for both births and the second time I really felt anxious because I was like, oh no, I'm on a ticking time-clock again.Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Because that's how you were treated.Johanna: Yes. I was lucky that I have a super supportive provider. And she was like, "Baby's fine, you're fine, everything's fine. We're just going to wait it out."Yeah, I mean crucial to have the right provider that is going to give you that grace and give you that time and that space, but just know the facts. Just arm yourself with information that as long as the fluid is clear, as long as you have no signs of infection-- at least here they make you come in for non-stress tests like every, I don't know if it's 12 hours or 24 hours when your water has broken. As long as everything's looking okay, you can wait, I think, up to 72 hours.Meagan: I've actually even had a client wait five days. Johanna: Holy smokes. Meagan: Five days. Close monitoring you guys, really close monitoring. But it was nothing that said a baby needed to be born. So five days is maybe abnormal. This was a home birth transfer to hospital. Even with five days rupture of membranes, the hospital did not "make" her, as I'm putting quotes up, have a Cesarean or do anything different because she advocated for herself. But it really can. 72 hours. It really can happen. So okay, we are going to stop talking about this, you guys. We're going to have links in the show notes to dive deeper into questions for your provider. What about premature rupture of membranes and things like that. So we're going to have those in the show notes if you want to dive more into that. You can dive in. But we're going to take one quick break for the intro, and then turn the time over to Johanna. Okay girl, thank you so much for chatting with me about that. I really do think it's so important.Johanna: I think knowledge about everything is your best friend when you're planning for any birth, but especially a VBAC.Meagan: Right. I know. It does suck that VBAC has to be so much more intense in our prep and our research and all these things because we're just moms going in to have vaginal births. That's all we are. But, but unfortunately that's not how it's viewed. That's just not how it's viewed in most areas of the world. So yeah, all right. Let's talk about that first birth.Johanna: Okay. So I got pregnant with my first daughter Mila in the summer of 2020. So heavy, COVID times. So that was scary enough. Because of COVID and the shift in culture towards socialization and going into hospitals and stuff like that, me and my husband decided to look into home birth which was not really on my radar before, but the more that I looked into it, I was like, oh, this is super beautiful, and I love the idea of birthing my baby at home in the piece and quiet of our own space.Meagan: Yeah. And a lot safer than a lot of people think.Johanna: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The more I looked into it, the more I was like, okay. This is a totally viable option for us. I had a pretty uneventful pregnancy. I was very lucky. I had very minimal symptoms. Everything went well. I didn't have anything scary happened during the pregnancy. I will say that I didn't take the best care of myself. I am usually a pretty active person and I totally just didn't do much exercise or working out. I think in the back of my mind, I was scared that something bad was going to happen if I overdid it. It was just a lot of first-time mom anxieties.Meagan: Totally get it.Johanna: Yep. I didn't eat the best. I didn't take the best care of myself. I didn't do a whole lot to prep for the birth other than your typical childbirthing classes, bringing baby home through the hospital, generic courses that I think a lot of first-time moms, that's what they do, right? I read a couple of books. I read the What to Expect books, and I think I read Ina May's Guide to Childbirth.Meagan: Great book.Johanna: Yep. But I had no idea what to expect. When it came to labor and birth, I really was going in blind. I will say, I just put my faith in that my provider was going to hold my hand through it. That was a mistake. So yeah, I mean, it was a pretty uneventful pregnancy. There wasn't a whole lot to say other than it was COVID and everything was scary and didn't really know what was going on. When I was 41-ish weeks, my water ended up breaking. It was the middle of the night, and I didn't really know what happened. It was just like a little squirt and went back to bed. And in the morning, it was like when you move a position and a little bit comes out and you move a position and a little bit. It was one of those. And then I lost my mucus plug. So I was like, oh, I better call my midwife. So I gave her a call, and she totally brushed me off. She was like, "No, I think it's probably just discharge. I wouldn't worry about it." So that was another red flag was her just totally brushing off my feelings and what I believed was going on. So I hung up the phone and I was like, well, I don't really know what to do now. I'm fairly certain that my water's broken. So I waited a couple of hours, and it continued to trickle out. I eventually called her again and she was like, "Okay, okay, you can come in. You can come in and I'll check, but I'm pretty sure it's just discharge." So I went in and sure enough, she was like, "Oh, your water did break and it's amniotic fluids. Look at that."Meagan: Interesting.Johanna: Yeah, I could have told you that. So I was like, "Well, what do we do now?" And she was like, "Well, we can wait up to 72 hours as long as everything's healthy. That's fine, so we'll keep monitoring things." She sent me home and told me to just relax. She said, "If labor doesn't pick up today, go to bed and in the morning, do a castor oil induction." I did that. When I woke up the next morning and nothing had happened, I did do the castor oil induction. I will say that I will never do that again because it was horrible. Sorry for the TMI, but it just gave me severe diarrhea, and then nothing happened, and I was super uncomfortable. So that wasn't fun. That wasn't fun. That didn't work.I went in for a non-stress test that afternoon. She decided to check me, and I had made zero progress. I was not dilated at all. I had zero effacement or anything like that, so no progress. I felt super discouraged. My water has been broken for however long at this point-- 36 hours, I think, probably. I've made no progress. The castor oil induction and failed. I had barely slept the night before, so I was tired and I was just stressed. I was like, when is this going to happen?Meagan: But at this point you weren't really thriving with contractions. Nothing was too intense to be telling you that there should be progress, right?Johanna: Literally not a single contraction or anything. Nothing was happening.Meagan: True PROM, and so your defeating feeling is super normal because in our minds we were told our water breaks, we should be having a baby. But if we have PROM, don't expect to be dilated. Right?Johanna: Yes.Meagan: I did too. I expected to be way dilated and I wasn't.Johanna: So I felt super defeated. And like I said, I wasn't sleeping. I barely got any sleep the night before because I was just anxious for birth to get going. I ended up crying in her office about how stressed I was to end up in a C-section because my sister had a long, pretty terrible labor that ended in a C-section. It was just not a great experience for her. I don't exactly remember what my midwife said, but I did not feel reassured leaving that appointment. But we did end up deciding that if I didn't go into labor that night, I was going to be induced the next morning because I was just not sleeping well. I was not able to rest and relax because I was just anxious. So I was like, okay. I guess my home birth plan is out the window, but at least there's a plan. I ended up going home. We had dinner, and I started getting contractions just after dinner which was exciting.Meagan: Yeah.Johanna: But then they petered off after, like, I don't know, an hour or two. So we went to bed, had the hospital bags packed and everything ready to go for an induction the next morning. Labor started around 2:00 AM. It started on its own around 2:00 AM.Meagan: How many total hours is this until labor comes?Johanna: I think it was about 48 hours after my water broke that I had the rupture of membranes that my labor actually started. I will say, it was pretty intense right off the hob. I hear a lot of women say that their early labor is like, "Oh, I took my other kids for a walk. I baked a cake. I did this. I did that to distract myself." My labors are not like that. My labors are intense right out the gate. I tried to eat something for breakfast. A few hours after that, I woke my husband up. We tried to eat breakfast. I got in the bathtub to try and relieve some of the discomfort. I hung out in there for a while. We had rented a birth tub. My husband got that set up. I called my midwife. She came probably around 11:00 AM, so at that point, I'd probably been laboring for like, I don't know, eight or nine hours. I was not coping well. It was very intense and I was not coping well with the pain. She checked me, and I was a 3. I was like, dang it. In my mind, what I know now is that it's not a linear thing and that it's not going to take another 18 hours to go from a 3 to 9. But in my mind then I was like, oh no, I can't do this for however many more hours because I'm already not coping well and I'm only at a 3. So I told her I was totally deflated and I told her, "I want to go to the hospital and get an epidural." She was like, "Okay, if that's what you want to do, that's fine." So I think between the time that she checked me and I was at a 3 and the time that I got the epidural, it was about two hours. That car ride to the hospital, wow, was not fun. But yes. So, in that two hours that it took between her checking me and me getting the epidural, she checked me again right as soon as it kicked in and I was at a 9.Meagan: Whoa.Johanna: Yeah. Meagan: 0 to 100. Johanna: Yeah, when I say that car ride, it was ripping through me.Meagan: Yeah, you were in transition at that point.Johanna: Yeah. When we were in the hospital waiting for the anesthesiologist to come in and do the epidural, my midwife and husband are joking around trying to make me laugh. I'm like, "This is not where are at right now." I was not having it because, obviously, I was in transition, and it just was not where I was at. So yeah, she was like, "Okay, well you're at a 9 now, that's great. So rest for an hour and then we'll probably be pushing." The epidural was heavy. I felt nothing from my ribs down. So an hour went by and she's like, "Hey, you're complete. Start pushing." I felt nothing. I'm trying to push, and she's telling me that I'm doing a pretty good job considering I have an epidural, but baby was still high. And then all of a sudden, I think I'd pushed a couple of times and all of a sudden, all of these doctors and nurses and bunch of people just start run into the room and they're all speaking French because it's a French speaking hospital.Meagan: Oh my gosh.Johanna: So I have no idea what's going on. Nobody is telling me anything. They're all speaking a different language. And I was just like, "Can somebody please tell me in English what's going on?" They told me that she was having late decal every time that I was pushing.Meagan: Okay.Johanna: So between pushes she was fine, but every time I'd push, her heart rate would go down and then have trouble recovering. At no point did anybody recommend maybe trying a position change or anything like that. Like maybe her cord was being pinched in that position. If only I knew now or knew then what I know now.Meagan: Yeah, like hydration, movement, doing something, pushing in a different position.Johanna: Yeah, yeah no. So like I said, my midwife threw her hands up and stepped back and let the OB take over and didn't say anything to me after that. The OB basically let me push three times and then was like, "Nope, this is going to take too long. We need to have a C-section," and she called a C-section.Meagan: Wow. Do you remember how low your baby's heart rate was getting?Johanna: No, I have no idea.Meagan: Okay, interesting. I mean late deceleration are less ideal, right? We don't want them to happen late. We want that to be the recovery period.But yeah, there could have been some things done.Johanna: Yeah, and looking back, it's frustrating to know that maybe if one little thing had been changed, the outcome could have been totally different.Yeah, but you can't blame yourself for that either. It's hard to look back and be like, the what if's. But yes, you did whatever you did in the moment with the information you were given.Johanna: Exactly. So I went in for the C-section. It went fine. There were no complications, but being strapped down to a table in a really cold room and having the shakes and not feeling that, not being the person to get to hold your baby. I mean, everyone listening to this podcast pretty much knows what thats like and how it was demoralizing and traumatizing for sure. But it went fine. She was born healthy. I didn't have any complications. But yeah, the emotional trauma was real and not just for me, but for my husband too. We got discharged about 24 hours after the C-section and going home and seeing the birth tub still set up in our living room was a very emotional experience. We both ended up breaking down crying.Meagan: Yeah.Johanna: So I had to do a lot of emotional recovery from that birth as well as physical recovery because the physical recovery from C-section was also extremely rough. I remember every time I would have to get up out of bed, it felt like I was being ripped in half. It's rough, but I knew right from the moment she was born that I would be VBACing my next baby because we had always planned on having a few kids.Meagan: I want to point out to everyone, too, the importance of postpartum support and postpartum help and planning. We never know the outcomes of birth. I didn't know the outcomes. I didn't realize that it was going to take me 15 minutes to walk 10 stairs up to my bedroom. I didn't realize it was going to take me 15 minutes to walk down the stairs. I couldn't be holding anything. I didn't realize how exhausting it was going to be to get out of bed to go to the restroom let alone taking care of a newborn baby and also thriving as an individual. So it's really important to really try not to ignore the postpartum period. I think it's easy to do because we're so focused on the birth. Especially with VBAC, I think we're so hyper, hyper focused on that VBAC, that outcome, and that experience which I do not shame anyone for being. I just want to plug it in. Don't forget about your postpartum because whether it's physical or emotional.You came back to this space of seeing a plan that didn't unfold the way you wanted it to. That can be very emotional, very traumatic even in some ways. So yeah, having some resources for postpartum as well. I just want to plug that in.Johanna: Yeah, that's a really good point. I did no prep for postpartum for my first birth.Meagan: Me either.Johanna: It wasn't even something that like dawned on me to think about. When I was in postpartum, I was like, wow, this is really intense. Like the sleep deprivation, the recovery, the breastfeeding, everything. It;s super intense. So for sure, don't neglect postpartum plans and getting the support that you need.Meagan: Yeah.Johanna: So anyway, I think from a couple weeks postpartum with Mila, I ended up finding your podcast and absolutely just binging it and trying to intake any knowledge I could get about VBAC natural childbirth-- just anything I could get my hands on, I was consuming because I knew that I was going to VBAC. I knew that I wanted to have a birth that was as intervention-free as possible for my second. So I ended up getting pregnant with my second daughter Bailey in the summer of 2022. The very first thing I did was I hired a doula. I already knew what doula I wanted before we even got pregnant because we had interviewed a few, and the doula that I found was actually a VBAC mom herself. And she just had a beautiful calming energy about her. I was like yep, that's who I want. So with that test, the lines turned pink, and I was already getting her on board. I ended up hiring the midwife that she recommended as well. I was intent on doing everything that I could this second pregnancy to set myself up for a successful VBAC that I could possibly do because I knew that if I did everything that I could possibly do and it still ended up in a C-section, then I don't have to have any lingering questions of well, what if I had done this? So it was like, I was going to do everything I could to set myself up for success. I was super diligent with eating well, exercising, and chiropractic care. I did all of the Spinning Babies' exercises, walking, and yoga. I did a HypnoBirthing course which I really, really liked, and I'm doing again for this pregnancy. I put up my birth affirmations. I did all the things You name it, I did it. My husband was super, super amazing and supportive and he was there with me every step of the way through every appointment and did all the coursework with me and everything like that. I'm very lucky to have a super supportive husband. I had another pretty uneventful easy going pregnancy. Other than a little bit more morning sickness and some SPD, it was pretty easy. I will say there's one thing that they make you do here, and I don't know if you guys have to do it in the US but if you're planning for a VBAC you have to see an OB around 36-37 weeks. Do you guys have to do that as well?Meagan: Yeah, so not if you're out-of-hospital. You don't have to do it. Some midwives still out-of- hospital will be like, "Hey, I want you to consult with a partnering physician," as in, "Hey, this is someone we would transfer to.: I went a consult with them, but with the midwives in hospital they require them to do a VBAC consult, and it's pretty much a visit where the OB is like, "Hey, this is what you're doing. Here is your risk. Do you comply?"Yeah.Johanna: Yes. So I ended up having to do that, and I knew it was going to be a negative experience. I knew it was just going to be fear-mongering and throwing scary statistics out. So I already had my guard up for that. And then it was also at the hospital where I had my C-section, so even just walking into that environment was very triggering.Meagan: Yeah. So I went to that and I was right. She told me, "As soon as you go into labor, you need to go to the hospital and you should have continual monitoring and and epidural just in case," and all of these things where I'm just like, no, that so goes against everything that I believe will lead to like a healthy, happy birth.I definitely didn't tell her about my plans. I actually was hoping this would end up in a home birth. I didn't actually mention this. My plan-- I didn't want to commit to a home birth. I was a little bit anxious because of my first birth ending up transferring to hospital, that I would end up having to do that again and then have that crushing disappointment that it didn't work out again. So my plan with my midwife was that I was going to labor at home as long as possible, and we were going to play it by ear. As long as everything was going well, then I would potentially have her at home. But I just didn't want to have that pressure that I needed to stay home because this was going to be a home birth. Do you know what I mean?Meagan: No, I totally do. I mean, when I was planning my, it wasn't a HBAC, it was a birth center birth. It's like a downplayed HBAC. I mean, I was in a different home. Right. I totally do. I know exactly what you mean.Johanna: Yeah.Meagan: Yeah, yeah.Johanna: So yeah, I definitely did not tell the OB that my plan was to have a home birth because I just did not even did not want to get into that. So I nodded my head and was like, "Yes, sure. Okay, great."Meagan: Yep.Johanna: At one point, also during my midwifery care for the second pregnancy, my midwife was like, "It's standard for you. The hospital wants you to sign a release form with a backup C-section date."Meagan: What?Johanna: And I was just like, "Yeah, I will also not be doing that." And she was like, "That is totally fine. Just sign that you won't do that." Meagan: I do not consent. Yeah, I do not consent in doing this.Johanna: Yeah, yeah. I was like, I don't need that to clock above my head.Meagan: No.Johanna: So again, my due date arrived and passed. I ended up getting a couple membrane sweeps to try and move things along, but they were unsuccessful. And wow, they are very, very painful.Meagan: So can I super quick touch on that?Johanna: Yes.Meagan: Membrane sweeps-- that's a really big question we see as well. And when you talk about them being painful, that's actually a sign that the cervix wasn't ready. Like it wasn't forward. It wasn't open. If a membrane sweep is painful, it's a real big sign-- it's not a guarantee, but it's a real big sign that your cervix isn't ready. So quick rule of thumb, if you are dilated 2+ centimeters, 3 or more is more ideal. Your cervix is really forward, meaning they don't have to reach back and in, and you are effaced at least 75-80%, that's a little bit more ideal and less painful. But if they are going back, a lot of the times is because they have to reach back and in. And so that is, that is that. And then it can cause pain, prodromal labor, things like that and, and frustration because you're wanting it to work and it's not working.Johanna: Yes. So yeah, they didn't work for me, but my midwife did tell me that I was actually 3 centimeters and she could stretch me to 3. Meagan: Great. So you were at least dilated.Johanna: Yes. So despite the fact that it was super painful and didn't work, I was still feeling very encouraged to know that my body was doing something good. Meagan: YesJohanna: Because you'll remember my first birth, I was completely closed and nothing was happening after my water broke. So I was feeling pretty good about that. At about 40 weeks and 4 days, my water broke again before labor started. It was another one of those slow trickles, and it was the middle of the afternoon, so I called my midwife, and she was like, "Okay, come meet me." She asked if the fluid was clear and I said, "Yes." And she said, "Okay, come meet me at the office later, and we'll do the non-stress test and check you out and make sure everything's dandy." So I went and everything was fine. We were just waiting again for labor to start. I felt okay because I had been through this before, and I knew my body would go into labor, but at the back of my mind I was a little bit stressing out because I was like, okay, I'm on a clock again. I went home. Nothing happened. I woke up the next day and tried to get things going with the breast pump. That got contractions going, but they never stuck around. I ended up confiding with my doula about how stressed I was feeling that I was on a clock and feeling like why can't my body just go into labor? She was extremely reassuring. She came over, and we just talked for a bit, and I felt a lot better after that. That was in the evening, the day after my water broke, and I was supposed to go in for a non-stress test. So I went and met my midwife for a non-stress test that night. It was 36-ish hours after my water had broke. Still, everything was looking good. Baby was good. She was happy. I was fine. There was no need to rush into an induction or anything like that. But she could tell I was stressed. My midwife could tell that I was a bit stressed and she was like, "It's fine. We've got lots of time. You don't need distress.: And she's like, "But I can give you these tinctures or whatever if you want to try them." It was like the blue or black. Meagan: Cohosh.Johanna: Cohosh, yes. I was like "Sure, I'll do anything at this point. I'll try anything. I don't care. So they almost look like tiny, tiny little white beads. I don't know if they're always in the same form.Meagan: Yeah, sometimes they're in drops like tincture drops or almost like you said, a pill-like bead type. Johanna: So she was like, "Okay, let's give you one now." She wanted me to take four doses an hour apart.Meagan: Did you put them under your tongue?Johanna: Yeah. So she got me to take one when I arrived for the non-stress test and then when the non-stress test was over, it had been about an hour, so she gave me a second dose, and then she sent me home with two more. So we went home, and then I took one an hour after the previous dose and it was probably 10:30 at night at that point. Contractions started going after I took the third dose and I was like okay, they're probably going to peter out again because that's what they've been doing all day. I'm tired and I want to go to bed and I don't feel like staying up another hour to take the fourth dose. So me and my husband both took a gravel because my midwife told me to take a gravel and go to sleep.Meagan: What's a gravel?Johanna: A gravel is like an anti-nausea medication, but it makes you sleepy.Meagan: I did not know that. I've never heard of that. I don't think I've never heard it.Johanna: Yeah. Interesting.Meagan: Cool. I love learning. A gravel.Johanna: Gravel.Meagan: Yeah. Okay.Johanna: So yeah, she told me to take one and go to sleep because it makes you drowsy. So I think we had fallen asleep for maybe an hour and a half and I was woken up again with very intense contractions. And this time I was like okay, this is it for real. And like I said, with both my labors, contractions were intense straight out of the gate. So I woke my husband up. Taking the gravel was a mistake because we were both super drowsy. I woke him up and I was like, "I think you need to call the doula because this is definitely happening." And so he called her over and I labored in bed. I did my HypnoBirthing tracks. I did a lot of breathing through the contractions and the HypnoBirthing was super, super helpful, I will say that. We hung out for a while and just did that. My husband tried his best to stay awake despite how tired he was. Eventually, I think I waited maybe a bit longer than I probably should have to call my midwife because I was so determined to stay at home as long as possible. I didn't want her to come and be like oh, you're a 3, right?Meagan: See? Your mind. Even in labor we trigger back. We process things as they're happening from how they happened before, and it's really hard to let go. But your mind was doing it too, right? You're like no, I can't do this because I can't be that.Johanna: Yes. So what we waited, I think it was, I don't know. I have no concept of time. But we waited a couple hours or a few hours and my doula was like, "I think we should call the midwife." I was like, "Okay, can you call her?" So we called her and shortly after we called her, I was having contractions so intense that I was having an out-of-body experience. Like very, very intense. I was getting the shakes and hot and cold lashes. In my mind I was like, I'm going through transition. For sure, for sure. I'm going through transition. My midwife was not there yet and she would not arrive for probably like another hour.Meagan: You progress quickly from history.Johanna: Yes. So, by the time she arrived, she ran upstairs to my room. She checked me and she's like, "Okay, you're at an 8, so if you want to do a hospital transfer, if you want to go, we've got to go now." And I was like, "No, that ship has sailed. We're doing this here. As long as Bailey's healthy and I'm healthy, I'd like to stay here." So she was like, "Okay, we're doing this here." And she called over the other midwife because she wasn't actually sure that it was going to be a home birth, so she didn't have the other midwife with her, so she had to call the secondary midwife to show up. It was all very hectic. This time around, I plan on calling them much more ahead of time so that it's not so hectic when they arrived because lights got turned on, equipment was shuffled around and set up and definitely took away from the vibe a little bit. But yeah. So shortly after she arrived, I was complete and I had that very stereotypical moment where you feel like you got a poo.Meagan: And sometimes you just hold back because you're like, oh crap, wait. Do I need go poo first or should I have? Wait, what should I do? I don't know. I want to have the baby, but I don't want to poop.Johanna: Exactly. So I was like, "Oh my gosh, I feel like I have to poo." My midwife's like, "It's okay. This is normal. You're good." She was just encouraging me to just do what I felt like I needed to do. I ended up pushing for probably an hour, give or take, in a sumo squat position with my midwife on one side and my doula on the other side and then my husband would switch out for the midwife supporting me on either side. And yeah, I only had to push for maybe an hour, give or take. Her head got a little bit squeezed at one point when she was coming out, so when she came out, she was in a bit of shock. Because of where I was in my room, and the equipment was on the other side, my midwife had to make the decision to clamp and cut her cord and take her over to their equipment to give her a little bit of help which was very scary. She didn't end up needing oxygen, but they thought that she might. So she ended up being okay, but it was definitely a scary couple of minutes where I didn't know what was going on. But yeah, she ended up being okay. The only thing I was a little bit disappointed in was the second time around, not being the one who gets to be the one to hold my baby and bring her to my chest and missing out on that experience again.Meagan: Yeah.Johanna: But obviously I was amazed that I had done it. I had gotten my home birth, I had gotten my VBAC. I was in shock.Meagan: I can so relate. Sometimes you're so focused on pushing that baby coming out, and then it happens and you're like, am I dreaming that this happen? And you're looking around and you're like blinking and you're like, no, I'm awake. I just did this. I just did this. And you're so excited.Johanna: I was still in La La Land because I had labored so hard for eight hours and yeah, you're out of it and just in disbelief.Meagan: Yeah. Yeah.Johanna: Like, did this really just happen?Meagan: But it did. It just happened.Johanna: Yeah. So that was a really good feeling. Recovery was like night and day. I could immediately just go and have a nice shower and walk back to my bed and crawl into my bed. It was comfortable and I wasn't in pain. I had mobility, and I could lift my baby up. It was a good feeling. Although I will say that without the epidural, the fundal massage was a really unpleasant experience.Meagan: Yes. So for everyone that doesn't maybe know, fundal massage is something that they do after labor and delivery, they essentially put their hand, sometimes fist. Now it's not like they punch you, but think about a fist. Look at the bottom of your fist. They put the bottom of their fist along your uterus, the top of your uterus. They push down and massage. They push down and they massage. And sometimes they do it three or so times. You take a deep breath, they do it. You take a deep breath, they do it. And why they're doing that is because they're checking to one, make sure your uterus is clamping back down to its normal size right after birth and the placenta is out. It starts doing its job and going boop boop, boop, right back down to its normal size. But sometimes it can get a little boggy or bleeding can occur. So yeah, you want to make sure that. Now, really quick tip. If for some reason your uterus is still staying boggy and not clamping down as much, something you can try to do if you are able is urinate. Go to the restroom. That's a really big thing to help the uterus clamp back down. And even if you have an epidural, sometimes you have to get a straight cath. And if you can't go to the bathroom, sometimes you can get a straight cath to release. But yeah, that is not as friendly when you're unmedicated. But take deep breaths. If you can, get that baby on your chest or hold someone's hand-- your doula, your partner, your midwife, anybody's hand and just take really deep breaths and know that it's okay. It's okay. It doesn't last too long. But yeah.Johanna: So going back to our chat about postpartum.Meagan: Yeah.Johanna: So the recovery of vaginal versus C-section night and day for sure. But I will say that my postpartum with Bailey was way harder than with my first. It had nothing to do with the birth. I think she was asynclitic in my uterus. And so when she came out, she had a pretty bad case of torticollis and a tongue tie which made breastfeeding very difficult. I got mastitis twice in the first four weeks, like a really bad case twice in the first four weeks. I ended up with a bad case of food poisoning at three weeks postpartum.Meagan: Oh no.Johanna: And I had some prolapse symptoms as well. I will say that there were a lot of things happening in the first month, month and a half of my postpartum that I didn't expect and were very intense and difficult. I mean, just for breastfeeding, I was in so much pain that there were many times that I wanted to just give up and be like, nope, never mind. Forget this.So having good lactation support was really crucial.Meagan: Oh yes. And get lactation support before you have your baby. It sounds weird. It sounds really strange to connect with someone about breastfeeding before your baby is born. But oh my gosh, you guys, it's so impactful. I mean, we've talked about it before with The Lactation Network and other IBCLC supports. It's so important. I had similar. So my baby was born be a Cesarean. So in a Cesarean, a baby can also develop torticollis too with the way they are and the way they come out. But my baby had torticollis and she had a tongue tie. So very, very difficult. Challenging for sure and frustrating.It can impact things like mastitis and yeah, I love that you pointed that out. My was recovery all around better, but that doesn't mean my experience was all sunshine and butterflies. I really want to just highlight that one more time, you guys. Vaginal birth doesn't mean your postpartum journey is going to be the easiest. Mine wasn't. My VBAC after two Cesarean birth was not the easiest. It just wasn't. So again, get those resources beforehand. Right?Johanna: Yeah. And I will say, I don't know what I would have done if I wasn't with midwifery care and having them on call for the six-week postpartum because I swear, I called them every second day about something that was going on.Meagan: Well, and that's more unique to home birth too because even with the hospital birth midwives, it's not the same. They usually say, "Oh, I'll see you in six weeks," and you can call. You can call any OB or midwife. You can call any provider, but there's a different level of care and follow-up in that postpartum stage and it's very impactful. It's very, very impactful.Johanna: Oh for sure. Yeah.Meagan: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love everything and I love all these tips. There are so many tips and nuggets along the way. Is there anything else that you would like to drop here for the listeners in regards to home birth or preparing or postpartum or any words of encouragement that you may have?Johanna: I mean, I think that, like I mentioned at the start, just arming yourself with as much knowledge as you can is going to be your best bet to get the outcome that you want and just feel empowered throughout your pregnancy and your birth. So just arming yourself with as much knowledge as you can get your hands on and yeah, getting a good provider, trusting yourself, believing in your body, and setting yourself up for postpartum too because that's an important thing when you're so focused on getting your VBAC is letting the postpartum stuff fall to the wayside.Meagan: Yeah.Meagan: Taking care of yourself afterwards too is important.Meagan: Yes. Taking care of yourself. We don't. We don't take care of ourselves enough, you guys. Really pamper yourself. If that means you have your postpartum doula. If that means you hire a house cleaner to come in every other week. If that means you hire or have family come in to help, just whatever. Light house cleaning or holding baby or playing with toddler. Johanna, she's going to have two, you guys. She's almost on her third, and it's another baby girl.Johanna: Oh, yes. Yes. That's three for three.Meagan: So three baby girls. I mean, you've got your hands full in your postpartum experience.Right. So really do it. I don't want to stereotype women, but sometimes we get into this space of,  we can do it and we don't need to spend money on ourselves and things like that, but this stage of life is so important to invest in yourself. Really, truly invest in yourself because you deserve it. And your sleep and your experience and your mental health, it all matters so much. So yes, you might hire a cleaner and you might be spending that money, but guess what? That's okay. Do it. Johanna: And when you're taken care of, then you're a better mom to your kids.Meagan: Yes, yes. My husband always says, "When mom is happy, everyone else is happy." But really, really, you deserve it. Women of Strength, you deserve to be pampered and loved and supported. So Johanna, thank you so much again for such a powerful episode. I'm so grateful for you. And please keep us posted on this baby number three.By the time this episode comes out, you will have had this little baby girl.Johanna: Yes. I'm due January 4th, so I will definitely be sending you a message when she makes her entrance.Meagan: Please do. Please do. Okay well, thank you so much.Johanna: 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. 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Liz, a mama of two from Long Island, New York, joins us today sharing her experience with preeclampsia, an unexpected C-section, and her successful VBAC with her second. Liz had a perfect health history and never had any surgeries before her C-section. It was so frustrating to feel so out of control. In between her birth and her second pregnancy, Liz's mom unexpectedly passed away. She shares how she has been processing the intense grief from her mother's passing and from the positive birth experience she wasn't able to have. Liz made lots of changes going into her VBAC birth including diet, switching providers, and choosing to birth at home!Liz's DoulaCoterie Diapers - Use code VBAC20 for 20% offHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan Hello, everybody. We have our friend, Liz, from New York with us today. She is a mom of two and almost two years old. Right? Your VBAC baby?Liz: Yes.Meagan Almost two years since your VBAC baby.And then an almost six-year-old. And yeah, like I said, she lives in New York, and she's going to be sharing her stories with you guys today. With her first birth, she actually had preeclampsia, so she's gonna talk more about that. And then with her second birth, she didn't have preeclampsia. I think this is an important thing to talk about because we know that having preeclampsia again is a possibility, and it might be slightly increased if you've had it, but it doesn't mean you will. So I'm hoping that we can talk a little bit more if you did do anything to try to avoid it. The second one, we'll talk more about that in a little bit. But knowing that it's still okay. If you have preeclampsia, you can still VBAC. Now, in her second one, she didn't have preeclampsia, but you can still VBAC if you have preeclampsia. So we're going to talk about that a little bit after your first birth too, because I want to know more. All right. We do have a Review of the Week today, and this is by jess2123. It says "Best Podcast for VBAC". It says, "I listened to the podcast after my son's birth. I learned so much that I knew I wanted a VBAC for my second birth. When I became pregnant again, I would listen to this podcast during my walks. Thanks to the wealth of knowledge that I gained, I had my unmedicated VBAC in 2023." Congratulations, Jess, on your VBAC, and thank you so much for your review. I know this year we're tossing it up between reviews and educational pieces, but I just do want to remind you really quickly that if you haven't left us a review yet, we would love it. You can push "pause" right now and listen or leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can go over to Google. Google "The VBAC Link", and leave us a review there. These reviews really do help us and bring us so much joy. So without further ado, I want to turn the time over to you.Liz: Thank you so much. I guess every VBAC story starts with the Cesarean story, or at least there's one in there. My pregnancy journey did start with a Cesarean as far as the first birth. As Meagan mentioned, I am a mom of two. With my first son, I fortunately have been reproductively very healthy and otherwise healthy my entire life. I was able to track everything. I had regular cycles and really no issues there, so I feel really, really blessed in that regard. I was able to get pregnant pretty easily. I believe I got pregnant in about February 2018 for the first time. I found out mid-March after I tested in my bathroom and just ran out with the test to my husband, nothing super special. I think I was just shocked. I remember I had gone to a St. Patrick's Day parade and felt so tired that I said to my friend, "I'm going to go home and nap in between that and another event." They were all like, "Why are you napping?" I was like, "I don't know, I'm just really tired." I took the pregnancy test to rule out pregnancy. It was immediately positive which was amazing. My EDD, my estimated due date, was supposed to be Thanksgiving that year, so it was November 22nd which was Thanksgiving 2018. That just made me laugh because I was like, wow, what a far cry from Thanksgiving Eve spent even a decade previous. But yeah, so my pregnancy started out pretty status quo, I would say. I definitely experienced that nausea. My morning sickness was definitely an all-day thing, so it was a little tough. I think it threw me for a loop because I didn't know what to expect. I had always wanted to eat healthier, especially being pregnant, but it was like my body would not allow me to eat what I wanted or what my brain wanted me to eat. It was a lot of carbs to start out. I know that's pretty common. I remember when I went for my first appointment, I had called an OB's office. I'm trying to think. I think I had gone for one well-woman visit before, but I had two friends, actually three friends who had delivered with this OB and had good experiences, so I figured I would give it a try. The funny thing is, pretty much from the jump, I could tell that we weren't very aligned. I didn't really see eye-to-eye with him, but he had this nurse practitioner who was wonderful, and I feel like she drew people in because she was just very nurturing and calming, and she just had that great energy. I knew, obviously, she wasn't going to be at my birth, but I still stayed there.Meagan Oh yeah. So can we talk about that a little bit? So you had one provider that you're like, "I don't know, our energy doesn't match." And then one that you're like, "Our energy totally matches." But then they wouldn't be birthing with you. So tell me a little bit more of what that provider was that wasn't matching your energy.Liz: Yeah. So I guess because I had always been so healthy, my experiences with medical professionals were very limited. I had just gone to doctors for routine checkups my entire life, and everything was always fine. I think because I wasn't very experienced in the medical world, I almost had this aversion to it. I just was like, they're there if there's an emergency, but it'll be fine. Everything will be fine. I'm trying to do this as naturally as possible. He seemed very old school. I don't know how to describe it, just very set in his ways. I remember, I'll circle back around, but towards the end of the pregnancy when I had finally gotten the gall to tell him that I really wanted to try and do this unmedicated because I was so nervous to say that, he was like, "Well, don't expect this baby to just fall out of you. You're a first-time mom."Meagan Wait, what?Liz: He literally said that to me. And I was like, "Okay, I didn't think that." Meagan: I wasn't saying that. Liz: Yeah, I wasn't saying that I didn't think I wouldn't have to work hard. That's not what I'm saying. So just comments like that. The bedside manner just didn't seem very nurturing. He was very by the book, quick appointments, and asking me his little checklists of items, and that was it, whereas I felt like his nurse practitioner was very warm, had great bedside manner, and really just cared about mothering the mother in that situation. It wasn't just about the baby and how I was going to give birth or how I preferred to give birth. It was the entire experience. I remember at one point, she even said, "Obviously, there is a need for testing certain things and for keeping an eye on everything, but I really just feel like if we left women more alone to go through their pregnancies, they might be better off because we're so hands-on in the United States, and it just causes sometimes more anxiety throughout a time that's supposed to be really beautiful."So she did mention that she reminded me of, I don't know, a woman who crouched down in the field and gave birth to her babies in the woods. That's who she reminded me of. I don't know if that's the truth for her. I never did ask anything about her birthing experiences, but that's who she reminded me of. Just super warm and nurturing. I think also I maybe just aligned more with a female provider. It could have been just that too.Meagan: Yeah, it could have been. But I mean, what you were saying, comments like that, if I'm being super straight, we've interviewed providers on here that have come across really great, and then the more I've interviewed them, I'm like, "Oh, I don't know if I like that. I don't know."That can just happen. I think that's where it comes with vetting your provider and going with who makes you feel warm and fuzzy. But at the same time you're in this place where you're like, well, we've got this medical. We'll see how it goes. I've got this to also like, I've got this warm, fuzzy, filling-my-cup over here. So it seems like it's an okay match, right?Liz: Yeah. And I also manipulated it to the point where I would only make appointments when she was available throughout my pregnancy where the office was like, "You have to see the OB. You have to. He is going be the one who's attending your birth." I'm just like, "But I don't want to. I don't want to do that."Meagan: Yeah.Liz: I just stuck with the practice, I think, because I was nervous. I was new to it and like you said, I was getting my warm and fuzzy cup filled by that nurse practitioner's presence. Things progressed. I finally outgrew that morning sickness. By the second trimester, it was week 12 or 13 and it let up, and I was feeling good. I was pretty energetic. I was doing yoga on a somewhat regular basis. Nutritionally, I do want to mention because I think this does play a role in how things may have gone with the preeclampsia. But nutritionally, I was actually coming off of a vegetarian diet. I had been a vegetarian for a few years. I had gotten really deep into yoga in the early 2010s, and I became a vegetarian when I was doing teacher training for that. So I was purely vegetarian for a few years, and then I started integrating poultry back into my diet. I ate very little because my husband also doesn't consume a lot of meat, so we just didn't eat a lot of meat. I feel like I'm already a picky eater even as an adult. I definitely was as a child, but even as an adult, I still have things that I just don't like, so I feel like my diet was pretty limited, and I perhaps was not getting the nutrients that I needed, especially when my body underwent this or got pregnant and was going through this stressful event.Meagan: Yeah. Growing a placenta and a baby. Yeah, it needed its nutrients.Liz: Yeah. So I feel like during my pregnancy, especially once I started to feel good again, I ate whatever I wanted. So that whole like, I'm just going to eat so healthy, I was just like, yeah, no. I'm eating for two. I totally knew that's not what you're supposed to do. Meagan: I did the same thing. Liz: Yeah. I was like, whatever. I'm feeling great. I'm going to eat it. It's there. I'm going to eat it. So I get to my 20-week anatomy scan. I'm not even sure if it was exactly at 20 weeks, and everything goes well. Fortunately, no complications with the baby. Oh, I had also gotten a NIPT to find out the sex of the baby, so I knew I was having a boy. The anatomy scan did validate that. But that week, I don't know if it was right before or right after my anatomy scan, I noticed that I was starting to swell just on my right side of my body. My right foot was swollen. My right ankle leg was a little swollen. I remember reaching out to my social media friends. I just put out a status like, "Hey, pregnant lady here. I don't really know what's going on. Is this normal? Is this something I should bring up to my provider? What do you guys think?" There were plenty of people who were like, "No, it's totally normal to be swollen at that point." I even said, "It's only on one side though. It's weird."Meagan: Yeah, yeah.Liz: So they were like, "Just elevate your feet. See what happens." It would always go down, but it was just odd that I happened to notice just the swelling on one side of the body. So definitely interesting. Yeah. So I keep going. I'm getting bouts of pretty much every pregnancy symptom, but it would always be very short-lived. I definitely had some reflux, short-lived. I got sciatic pain so bad one day that I couldn't get out of the car. I remember I was sitting in the passenger seat and I said to my husband, "I can't walk on my right leg right now because of my sciatic nerve." So I was doing all these exercises to try and get the baby off my nerve and all of that, and everything just waxed and waned. Nothing was long-lived by any means. So I get to 30 weeks. I think it was at my 30-week appointment, and I believe it was the medical assistant who come in and took my blood pressure and wait like they always do. I don't know if it was her or the nurse practitioner who said that I had my first high blood pressure reading. Like, "Oh, it's elevated a little bit." And I was like, "Oh, that's so strange. I've been a 120/80 girl this entire time, and my whole life, I've never had blood pressure issues." And they're like, "Okay, well it's something to keep an eye on. Let's see. We're going to let you lay on your side, and see if we can have it come down. We'll take it at the end of the appointment again." And it did. It would come down, but they definitely were like, "We're going to keep this in our back pocket, and we might have to have additional monitoring if this progresses." I didn't really know what high blood pressure and pregnancy could mean, so of course, I go to Dr. Google like a good pregnant lady does, right?Meagan: Yep. A lot of us, I'm guilty.Liz: Guilty. Yeah. I was like, okay, so it could be hypertension in pregnancy or it could turn into preeclampsia. I was reading all the things, how this could turn and what that all meant. So in the back of my head, I always thought like, okay. I'm aware of what could indicate preeclampsia, but that's not going to be me. I am a healthy person, right? I've always been healthy my entire life. There shouldn't be any issues while I'm pregnant. And that wasn't the case, unfortunately. But I did go in a few more times, and I did get elevated blood pressure readings. So I don't know what week I was, but I know it was the beginning of October. I saw this other nurse practitioner who was not warm and fuzzy. She was new to the practice and she saw me. She took my pressure, and you could see the alarm in her face, but she wasn't saying much. This stuck with me to this day. It's just so crazy. She handed me this paper. The hospital that I was delivering at is a small community hospital, but it's affiliated with this Catholic healthcare system where I live, so they have a few different hospitals that are also within that same system. She just gave me this paper that had a listing of all these numbers for these different departments at these hospitals, and she just said, "You need to call them and make an appointment." And I'm like, "I have literally no idea what this is about." She's like, "Your pressure is high. You need to go make an appointment with them," but that's all she said to me. Meagan: For what? Yeah. Liz: Yeah, what is happening right now? I remember even that day, she asked me about my face. She was just like, "Is your face swollen? Does your face normally look like that?" I was like, "I have a very round face. I have big cheeks. To me, my face doesn't look different." Yeah. So she handed me that paper, told me to call, and like the good patient I am, I was like, "Sure, I'll call." So I called. I found out it was maternal-fetal medicine, which for those of you out there that don't know what that is, that's a high-risk doctor, and I had no idea. So this is my first experience with that. I did call. I made an appointment, and my OB office had me do a 24-hour urine drop or urine drip, however you want to call that. Meagan: Urine catch? Urine catch, probably?Liz: Yeah, so for those of you who don't know what that is, they give you a jug from a lab, and you have to put your urine into that jug for an entire 24 hours. They test it, and they're checking to see if there's any protein that is spilling into your urine because that could indicate decreased kidney function. Meagan: Preeclampsia. Yeah.Liz: Yeah. That is a symptom of preeclampsia. So I did do that. I went and saw MFM, and in the office there, my pressures were labile. They even called them that-- labile. It had elevated a little bit, probably in the 130s over 90s, but then by the end of the appointment, it had come down. My labs for that urine catch did indicate that there was protein present, but it wasn't within a diagnosable threshold. It was below that lab threshold, so I basically wasn't diagnosable. But they were like, "Now we're going to watch you." Most people like to see their babies on ultrasounds. That's an exciting thing. I became so fed-up with having to go in. I was, at that point, a frequent flyer. I was going in weekly earlier than a pregnancy that wasn't having any sort of complications. I was getting not only an ultrasound, but an NST every time I went in, so I'd have to lay there for 45 minutes while they looked at the baby's heart tones and everything. Yeah, at that point, I was just really stressed out because I was like, is that what this is turning into? But I don't have preeclampsia. I think I also saw my OB within that timeframe and he mentioned, "If this progresses, we will be doing a 37-week induction." And I was like okay, so I'm going to keep that in mind. But again, this isn't going to progress to that because I'm healthy and we're going to make it past 37 weeks. I probably wouldn't get the type of delivery that I wanted. And that's probably something I should mention. If I was induced at 37 weeks, I was preparing to have an unmedicated birth, a vaginal birth, and I was even taking a HypnoBirthing class to try and labor as long as I could at home. My whole thing was that I didn't want to go to the hospital until I needed the hospital or until I felt I needed the hospital. So here I am thinking, okay. I want this unmedicated, low-intervention birth, but I'm having all these interventions right now because they need to monitor me. There's some sort of issue that might be brewing. Yeah. I already said I went to MFM and all of that. My symptoms, at that point, were mostly swelling. I was getting very swollen at this point. I had that pitting edema in my legs, so I could press my finger into my leg. Meagan: It stayed. Liz: It stayed, and then my feet were like little loaves of bread. My feet will never forget what they went through. My husband would just massage them every single night, trying to get the fluid to move out of my tissues. It was crazy. I had another experience with a different OB who was not my OB, but I was out at a family event at this restaurant, and this woman approached me, told me she was an OB, and asked me if I was okay because my legs and my feet did not look so great.Meagan: What?Liz: Yeah. I was just standing in the lobby minding my business, and she's like, "Are you okay?" as if I'm not being monitored, but do you think I'm just going through this free and unaware of what's happening? Yeah. So that was interesting. She said that she was an OB. Yeah. So I went for weekly NSTs, the ultrasounds, and everything looked great with the baby. He was never under any sort of distress. No concerns of intrauterine growth restriction, nothing like that, but my pressures just kept being labile. I actually borrowed a blood pressure cuff so I could monitor at home. There were some mornings where I'd lay down on the couch after I woke up, and my blood pressures were reaching into those like 140s over 90, 91 maybe. I just would cry. I was just hysterical. Like, why is this happening? I don't want to go to labor and delivery right now. I don't want to be monitored. I'm already being monitored so much. There were probably some weeks towards the end where it was more than once that I went into my OB's office for monitoring. So fortunately, we made it through that 37-week mark. We made it all the way to, essentially, the end. And we get to Thanksgiving Eve, right? So my due date is the next day. I'm at 39 and 6. This was one of those appointments where they said, "You have to see the OB." I know I just kicked and screamed, not really, but in my head like, "F"ine, I'll see him. So the medical assistant comes in, takes my pressure and my weight, doesn't say anything, and leaves the room. He comes in, takes my pressure in my weight, and he asks me to meet him in his office.Meagan: Really?Liz: Yes. So I get myself dressed out of the gown that they had given me, and I go meet him in this fancy office. And he's like, "Your pressure is very high today, very high. So you're going to be going to labor and delivery straight from here." He's like, "I have a few meetings that I have to attend to here, but I will meet you over there in a few hours." And I was like, obviously, on the verge of tears. I'm just like, "Can I please stop home and get my stuff? Like, I have bags, I have a dog."Meagan: If you can go to your meetings, I can go to my house.Liz: Right. And yeah, my OB's was maybe 12-13 minutes away from my house, and the hospital was about five minutes down the road. So I was just like, "Can I just go home and grab my stuff?" And he's like, "No, no, no. Go straight to the hospital." And he goes, "And you're probably going to have a Cesarean."Meagan: What?Liz: This is after I tell him my natural birth, or my unmedicated, definitely wanting a vaginal birth. I was like, what? Literally, that was when the tears of waterworks really started. I was just like, "there's no shot at me having a vaginal birth?" And he's just like, "Well, I'm going to be putting you on medication to prevent seizures, so you can either labor with that and have it cancel out my induction medication, or you can just be calm and go to a Cesarean." Like, go to the OR, essentially.Meagan: What were your pressures?Liz: 170/110 that day.Meagan: Okay. Okay.Liz: So, high. Meagan: Yeah. But he's like, "You can do this, but it's not going to work, or you could just calm down and do this."Liz: Yeah, yeah. It was like, those aren't options, so that's not really an option. Right? That's what you're telling me. Meagan: Yeah. Liz: Yeah. So I called my mom. I called my husband, frantic. I was just flipping out. I get out of the office, I'm crying in the parking lot telling everybody. They're telling me to go right to the hospital. So, of course, my husband rushes home from work. He was at work. It was a Wednesday, and he got my dog. He had to bring my dog to my mom's, grab our bags to the extent that they were packed, and he met me there. I was crying. I walked myself into the hospital. It was the most surreal thing. I checked myself in knowing that I was going to come out with a human being, which was bizarre. And when I finally got to labor and delivery, my nurse was so sweet, but I was crying so much that she was just like, "Are you going to be okay?" And I was like, "I really want a vaginal delivery." And she's just like, "Honey." She goes, "I understand. I do think he's making the right choice. I do think you're making the right choice," which again, I don't really feel like I had a choice in that.Meagan: Yeah, you're like, "I wasn't really given a choice."Liz: She was also trying to relate. She's like, "I've had three Cesareans. I promise you're going to be okay. You're going to be okay." I was just like, "I've never even had a tooth pulled. I don't know if I could do this."So my husband arrived again. I'm just crying. He's trying to cheer me up, trying to keep our eyes on the prize and the fact that we were going to hopefully have a healthy baby at the end of all this. I want to say between check-in and when my OB arrived and scrubbed himself in, it was probably about three hours. Yeah. And I walked into the OR, another bizarre experience. I just walked in.Meagan: Yeah. Yep.Liz: Okay, so everybody scrubs in. There's a whole host of people in there, including my nurse. I had never had surgery, so they're giving me all the instructions as to how I need to lean forward so that they can put a spinal block, I think, at that point, the anesthesiologist, and it was so bizarre. It felt like the most claustrophobic thing. If any of you have ever had Cesareans, hopefully you can relate to me, but feeling the numbness just go up your legs.Meagan: It is very strange. I walked in for my second one. With my first one I just had an epidural, but the second one I had a spinal.Liz: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, so bizarre. Then, like I had already mentioned I was so swollen, so they had to just take my very swollen-- I felt like a beached whale-- body parts and put them onto this operating table because I couldn't move once. Obviously, the spinal had activated. So that was bizarre. But my husband, I mean, this man is the calmest person and the nicest person I know. Thank God for him and his presence on that day. He kept me nice and calm. Everybody was really, really nice in the OR. The only thing I happened to notice at one point was they had my blood pressure cuff on. That's why I'm here, right? Because my blood pressures are so hig,h and it had slipped down to my wrist, so I had my arms out. I don't think my arms were strapped down. I don't remember that. I had them out, and I look over to the extent that I could to the anesthesiologist, like, "Hey, does somebody want to maybe put this cuff on? Because that's why I'm, here. That's why we're in this position right now." But yeah, my husband and I just chatted and laughed the entire surgery. Everything worked out really well with the spinal. I did not feel any pain. They did talk me through to an extent about what I would feel as far as tugging or pulling or pressure. My son was fortunately born really healthy, screaming, great Apgar score, the whole nine. He came, and oh my god, what a feeling. Obviously, I was so emotional because of how the birth had gone and what had led me there. But becoming a parent and seeing your child for the first time, you can't really describe that. It's amazing. I have really nice photos and video that the nurse took. They brought the baby over to me. They did not do skin-to-skin with me. Again, I had all of these birth plans, preferences, and, none of that came to fruition. None of that pertained to my or situation. I was so, so happy and also so sad. I don't know how to describe it. It was like the happiest and saddest day of my whole life up until that point. So recovery was interesting. I feel like I got maybe 5 hours of sleep in the hospital total. I was on a magnesium drip. People had told me that the side effects could be a little bit gnarly with that, but I fortunately didn't find anything abnormal. I think I had so much adrenaline. But I did try to get my son to latch, and he was having a really hard time latching. They had a lactation consultant from the hospital come in and see me, and I could not get him to latch. I happened to notice that his tongue was really tethered, super tethered. I could see the tie was really far forward, and he couldn't lift his tongue. So I kept telling them, I was like, "He can't lift his tongue up the way that I feel like he needs to." They just kept telling me how to hold my own body to try and breastfeed properly. I'm like, "I don't think that that's the problem though." So that was really challenging. They did want me to stay extra time for some monitoring. So the next day was Thanksgiving. I don't think my OB wanted to be there. It was a holiday, right? He took his sweet time coming in because they wouldn't even let me eat. That was the thing. I was on magnesium. They brought breakfast in at like 7:00, and he strolls in at like 10:30. I just watched my breakfast get cold in the corner. So that was interesting. But yeah, I think at that point, if you had had a Cesarean without complications, they were looking at about a 48-hour stay. But they asked me to stay an additional day because my pressures were still labile. They were still elevated. I did get put on-- I can't remember the name of medication, but it was blood pressure medication. I was taking Motrin for pain management, the hospital-grade Motrin for my Cesarean. I cannot even describe what it was like trying to get up and walk around that first time after surgery. It's insane. That was something I didn't expect. But yeah, I didn't get much sleep. The last day that I was there, my dog had gotten into a place in my mom's house that she couldn't get him. He had gotten into something, and she couldn't reach him, so she was flipping out. She called my husband. She didn't call me and just told him, "Listen, you have to come get the dog. I can't get him." So he did. I told him, "It's fine, it's fine, you can leave." While he was gone, I had friends come and visit me. They were still visitors pre-COVID. The covering physician came in. I had my son on Wednesday. Thursday was Thanksgiving and I saw my OB, and then there were covering physicians for Friday and Saturday. So we're at Friday now, Friday evening. He came in and saw me and he's like, "You know what? I might be able to discharge you tonight." I got so excited because I was like, this is my first experience having a newborn baby. My husband is trying to go deal with my dog. How awesome would it be if we could just go home tonight?So I got super excited. He said this right in front of my friends, too. He comes back in a short while later and was like, "I just looked at your chart. I looked at your pressures." He didn't clear out the room, nothing. And he's like, "You know what? I can't discharge you. Not with pressures like this. I can't do that." And he's like, "And the covering physician tomorrow won't be able to discharge you any sooner than late afternoon, early evening because that is when he will be here." I was like, okay. So here I am in my head thinking I could go home tonight, and now you're telling me I might be able to go home tomorrow afternoon or evening. I'm already very hormonal. I'm very emotional. My husband's not here.My friends wound up leaving, and I just sobbed. I just sobbed in my room like, oh my god. this is a nightmare. Why can't my body get it together? Why can't I just have normal blood pressures again?Meagan: Yeah.Liz: Yeah. We did wind up getting discharged the next day, but I remember that physician just being so the last straw for me in that experience. You didn't have to say anything at all, and then you also set it in front of all of my friends.Meagan: Uh-huh. Yeah. So you didn't stay with this provider, did you?Liz: I did not stay with this provider.Meagan: For your VBAC? Okay.Liz: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Yeah. I guess I should probably get into that story, right?Meagan: No, this has been great. This has been great. Yeah. Yeah. So you were done. You went home. You're like, last straw, no more, never again.Liz: Yeah. Yeah. And I did have my. My son assessed by a lactation consultant, and she said that was one of the most severe tongue ties that she had ever seen. She did recommend a release. I was four days postpartum at this point. I wound up supplementing with formula which was something I so didn't want to do, but I was just like, this kid is starving. He can't latch properly. I did. I went and saw a specialist, and I had his tongue and lip ties both revised, and it was severe. That was a severe tongue tie. I know people have mixed feelings about that, but he needed it. Even in my opinion, as a lay person.Meagan: Yeah. Yeah.Liz: But yeah, pretty much immediately I knew I wanted things to be different the following pregnancy and birth. I think I started thinking about my VBAC probably that day. It was probably the day I gave birth to my son. This cannot be how this goes every time.So it took me a really long time to even want to conceive again. Not only did I have all these complicated feelings about my birth because yes, I did have a healthy baby. Yes, I ultimately weaned off of blood pressure medication and my body came back to however you want to phrase normal, but I had had this experience that I was holding onto a lot of trauma from, and unfortunately, my son was four months old and my mom suddenly passed away. So yeah, it was unexpected. It was sudden. I still to the day am shocked that I didn't lose my milk supply, but I was able to pump in the hospital and get my son milk. That is a crazy, surreal experience losing a parent, but I don't think that there's much more cruel than losing someone that you care about so much. My mom and I were so close in a postpartum period that's already complicated by birth trauma. So now I had this grief for my mom. I had this grief for the birth experience I didn't have. I think that largely contributed to me waiting to conceive again. I also wanted to try and find out as much as I could about what causes preeclampsia. What exactly goes on in the body that would cause that to happen? Funny thing is the verdict is still out there. They're not exactly sure what causes it.Meagan: Yeah. And there are things that we can do to try to help avoid it, but there's nothing specifically that's like if you do this, you for sure won't have it.Liz: Yeah.Meagan: The same thing with gestational diabetes. It's within the placenta, but we don't know. It needs to be further studied.Liz: Yeah. I have heard that it has to do with the father. Have you heard that too?Meagan: I have heard that as well, that there's a connection. Yes.Liz: Yeah. So I wound up, I remember I saw a home birth my wife just for blood work between having my son and conceiving my daughter. She did mention, "Preeclampsia is largely a first-time pregnancy illness. Largely. It doesn't mean you can't have it a second time," but she was the one who mentioned to me you have a higher instance of getting it again if you have the same father for your child. And I'm like, "Well, I'm married."Meagan: Well, I am going to have the same father.Liz: Yeah. So that was always in the back of my head. It's like, okay well, subsequent pregnancy, less of a chance. But same father, more of a chance. So I was just wondering what my odds were. It definitely was there on my mind for a long time. I studied as much as I could about what could cause it. I've read Lily Nichols, Real Food for Pregnancy, cover to cover. Obsessed with her. Obsessed with everything she has to say. There it is right here.Meagan: And right here and right here. Real Food for Gestational Diabetes. Real Food for Pregnancy. Food is powerful, you guys. It's very powerful. But it's changed over the years.Liz: I know. I love how she presents the research because she's the one who really delves into it and presents it in such a digestible way. It was such an easy read. I was like, okay. Okay, here are some things that I can control. Can I control everything? No. But here are the things that I intend to do the next time.Meagan: Yeah.Liz: So my mom passed away in April 2019. It took, again, a few years, but by spring 2022, I was feeling ready. And my husband and I kind of discussed it. It was in little passing. "Hey, should we try and get pregnant again?" And it was one time. It's not lost on me how lucky I am in that sense that it took me one shot to get pregnant.Meagan: Which is awesome. Liz: Yeah. I found out my EDD for that pregnancy was going to be on Christmas Day.Meagan: Oh my gosh.Liz: Yeah. And I just said, "Wow, I can't avoid major winter holidays, apparently, with my pregnancies."Meagan: Yeah. Oh, my gosh.Liz: So we did not find out that we were having a girl, but she did wind up being a girl. Spoiler alert. But, yeah, I was really not feeling well that pregnancy. It was like aversions times 1000. I had this really bizarre one that I had never even heard anybody discussed before, but I had so much extra saliva in my mouth. I'm sorry. That might sound disgusting. It felt like when right before you're going to get sick, how your mouth fills up with saliva but all day.Meagan: Like your saliva glands were just excess all the time, giving you all the spit possible.Liz: Yeah, it was disgusting.Meagan: That is interesting. I don't think I've ever heard of that.Liz: Yeah, it was terrible. Fortunately, I was working from home. I was working full-time, but I was at home. I would just walk around with a spit cup. Like, how disgusting. It disgusts me to even talk about it. It's just like, what is happening? I was waiting for those aversions to let up because I couldn't stand the smell of coffee, which, I love coffee. Basically the sight of anything that wasn't pure oxygen was disgusting to me. The sight of opening up my refrigerator was like, ugh. Exactly. The gag reflex. That lasted my second pregnancy until 22 weeks. So it was rough. I joked that I was horizontal for 2022, and that's not even a joke. I really was lying down. I had so much guilt because my son was so energetic at this point. He was nearly four years old, and he had so much energy. He wanted to do things, and I could not muster up the energy most of the time. My husband was the default parent, and I never thought that that would be the case. That was really, really hard. That was probably the hardest part of the pregnancy. But yeah, so I started to really actively plan for that VBAC. I started to see a hospital-based group of midwives. I loved them. I had gone for well-woman visits between as well. But every provider that I saw was just amazing. I didn't have any bad things to say. I knew that I would be with them if I was in the hospital. But deep down in my heart, I really, really wanted to be at home. I had seen so many beautiful home birth videos when I did HypnoBirthing. And I also associated hospitals with sickness. I had been there because I developed preeclampsia.Meagan: Uh-huh.Liz: I had been there when my mom was sick and passing away. It was a sick place. I wanted to be at a place where I felt most safe. For me, that was home. I know people have a lot of feelings and opinions about that all over, but for me, that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to do all of the things to keep myself low-risk and able to birth at home if possible while still making plans for transfer and even surgery if it was needed again. So I wasn't ignorant to the fact that it could turn into that, but I was going to try all of the things.Where I live, there actually aren't a lot of home birth midwives who support HBACs, VBACs at home. But I found one and we clicked immediately. When I spoke to her on the phone, I was like, she is my girl. I need her. I need her energy at my birth. We met in person a few weeks later, and she was so, so gung-ho about it. She had mentioned that her mom actually had an HBAC, and she witnessed her mom having that HBAC. It was just ingrained into her. She really supported me with advice on diet. She helped me with supplementation. I was on a lot of supplements for this pregnancy. I'm not even going to front. I had so many alarms set for all my supplements daily. So yes, I was trying to support myself with diet, of course, but I was trying to also fill in any gaps that might be there with supplementation. I just know my diet's not perfect, and it certainly wasn't when I was feeling terrible.Meagan: Yeah, no one's is. No one's is. That's just the reality of it. We can be eating the best we can, and we still are often falling short. That's why supplements are really great.Liz: Yeah. Yeah. I was seeing a Webster-certified chiropractor the entire time to get myself into the best alignment to have that vaginal birth. The supplementation, I was doing reformer pilates. I had started it the year before, and I did it all the way until the very end of November 2022, so I was staying active. I was really trying. I basically said that I will do almost anything to keep myself at home. That was really my motto. Yeah, I really can't say I was totally worry-free. I was waiting for something to go wrong. I was. I was trying to keep this brave face as like, okay. I can do this. I can birth the way that I want to. I can have this complication-free birth and pregnancy experience. And in the back of my head I'm thinking, when is the next shoe go going to drop?Meagan: I mean, it's what you've experienced in the back story, the last story. And it's hard. Even if we've processed through things, there's still sometimes those little creeping thoughts that come in.Liz: Yeah. That is for sure. My midwife did recommend that I get a third-trimester ultrasound. That was more for her, but it was also for me. She never ever said, "You have to do this." Everything was really a conversation. The appointments, especially with a home birth midwife were an hour long or more sometimes. Just amazing. I loved going to see her. So I did get that third trimester ultrasound. It was more to check to make sure that the placenta wasn't compromised in any way and whether it was in a good position. There was no accreta. That was something that we really wanted to rule out to keep me low-risk and at home. I agreed with that. I am not anti-medicine by any means. I just want to put that out there just because I chose to have a home birth. I do respect medical professionals and their jobs and the need for surgery but I also wanted to keep myself in a place, again, that I felt safe, and that's really what it came down to. So in my head, I had mentally prepared to go to 41 weeks. I think that's where I prepared to go because I had learned that many, many women, especially first-time laboring women, because I did not labor with my son, I neglected to mention that I didn't labor at all. So first-time laboring women will go into labor typically, but somewhere between 40 and 41 weeks. Post-dates is very, very common. So in my head I prepared to go to 41 weeks and we got there. We got to Christmas. We through there. I was like, I'm going to go somewhere before New Year's Eve. No, nothing. So we got to New Year's Eve and here I am in my 41st week, and I'm just trying to keep myself calm. What am I going to do? I cannot go to 42 weeks. I can't do it. Mentally, I can't do it. Physically, I can't do it. I'm going to wind up at the hospital. Of course, all of these negative thoughts are swirling. I went for another adjustment with chiropractor. I went for an acupuncture session. I went for a few of them, but I did induction points with my acupuncturist. I was just trying to do all the things-- curb walking, I did the Miles circuit and all the things to try and help this baby engage. So we get to 41 and 1 for me, which is a Monday, and I was woken up with contractions that felt like period cramps. That's how I would describe them. Around 2:00 AM, I started timing them. They were 12 to 15 minutes apart at that point, but they weren't letting up. They were consistent. I woke up my husband getting all excited like, "Oh my gosh, this might be it. Here we are." And they weren't getting closer, but they weren't easing up. So they just continued like that for the rest of the day. I had gotten up from the couch at one point, and I felt like this small trickle. I went into the bathroom, and it didn't look like anything to me. It didn't look like much. There wasn't a huge gush of fluid, nothing. So I was like, oh, I think it's probably just discharge or maybe part of my mucus plug. I have no idea. I have literally no idea. But I was like, nothing seems off to me, and it wasn't enough fluid to be concerning. I did text my midwife to update her and she mentioned to me, "A lot of women will drop into more active labor when the sun goes down. Things get quiet. It starts to get calmer. I can almost guarantee that we're going to have a baby at some point in the next 24 hours." So I go to bed that night and thinking, I'm going to wake up Tuesday probably either be having a baby or have a baby already. I woke up Tuesday, and I was still pregnant. Here I was.Meagan: You're like, this is not what I was thinking.Liz: I remember I would wake up with a contraction, but again, they were 12 to 15 minutes apart. I would go to sleep between no issues and just wake up, breathe through the contraction, and go back to sleep. And that's how the whole night went. I just couldn't believe I was still pregnant. I really was starting to get a little down on myself. I was like, these aren't coming closer together. They're not intensifying. They're not letting up, but there's nothing really happening at this point. I texted my midwife again that morning, Tuesday morning, and she said she needed to come see me for the 41-week appointment anyway, so she said that she would come by that day. She was going to come to my house. And then we get to the mid-morning. It was probably around 10-10:30 and my contractions stopped, like literally up and left. Like, what is happening right now? I can't. I was in shock, literally in shock. Especially because labor had been going on for over 24 hours. It was absurd to me. But she's like, "Don't worry. I'm going to come see you for your appointment anyway." When she arrived later that day, I did ask her to do a cervical check because at this point I'm like, "Something has had to happen whether the baby moved down into a better station or I'm a little bit more dilated or just more engagement. Whatever it is, I just want to know at this point."Meagan:: Yeah.Liz: So she did. She said, "I'll go in there. I can do a cervical check and if I can get in there, would you like me to do a membrane sweep?" And I was like, "I would love that. Anything to get this going. Let's get the party started." I'm at my house. She does the cervical check. She's like, "I can do a membrane sweep." And as she basically finishes up, I feel this gush of fluid.Meagan:: Your water.Liz: Yeah. She stopped, and I said, "Was that fluid?" She's like, "I'm going to make sure it's amniotic fluid. I have the test strip," and of course, it lit up like a highlighter. She's like, "Yes." She goes, "So guess what? We're going to go after baby today. We're going to get this. We are going to get this party started." I had kept telling her, "I can't go to 42 weeks," and she kept saying, "Let's not go to 42 weeks. You'll be fine. We're going to get it moving." And here we are. She did mention, I was at that point, about 3-4 centimeters dilated, so pretty good. But she was like, "I can offer you, I have a Foley. I can offer you a Foley balloon just to put a little bit more pressure on the cervix and maybe we can get those contractions to start to start up again, and then hopefully come closer together." Yeah. So she did. She put that Foley in and she waited with me at my house, and we just chatted. It came out a short time after. It took very little. I didn't have discomfort with that, thankfully.Meagan: That's, good. I mean, your cervix was starting to come forward. Things were going.Liz: It was going. Yeah, yeah. So again, she stayed with me and once the Foley came out, she just advised me to put on some sort of protective underwear whether it was the adult diapers or a pad because now we knew that my fluid was at least leaking, but it wasn't coming out consistently anymore. I don't think it fully came out. It wasn't a big enough gush for it to be all of the fluid, if that makes sense.Meagan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.Liz: So she told me to do a few things. She's like, "I'm going to head out. You're going to call me when you need me," which, at that point, I was like, I have no idea what that means, but okay. And she's like, "Here are the things that you can do. Obviously nothing in there anymore, because we know that your amniotic sac is open.Meagan: It's broken. Liz: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But she said, "You could do some pumping. You could use some clary sage essential oil." She gave me her TENS machine, and she's like, "You could try the TENS machine." I had never known that you could actually use that not for pain management. I only thought it was for pain management. So I was like, "That's so interesting." So she's like, "Do the pumping. Do that." So I did. I did one session, I think, before I put my son to bed for the last time as an only child. I did. I went and laid down with him and just knew that was probably going to be the last time that he would wake up or the last time he had woken up as an only child. And then I did it one more time, and not only did my contractions come back, I started timing them on the app, and I'm watching them get closer. They're going from 10 minutes to 8 minutes to 7 minutes to 5 minutes. I'm just watching them like, oh, my gosh. So we get to 11-11:30 at night, and it's just me and my husband there, and they are three minutes apart, and they're not easing up, and they are getting intense. So there it was. They came back.Meagan: And labor begins.Liz: Oh, it began. It began. I have so many interesting photos that my doula wound up taking. Thank God for her. Not only for the photos, but for everything that she did during the labor and delivery. It was intense. It gets intense, or in my experience, active labor when you get the breaks between the contractions and you are able to rest. I took every opportunity to rest. My doula was trying to guide me into different positions. She would help by putting a warm compress on my back at times. She would encourage even location changes in my house just to see if I could use the toilet. She told me to get into the shower at one point. I was like, "I'm too claustrophobic in here." I didn't like that, but she was trying to get me to try different things. But it was so intense. The craziest part for me was transition. That was truly an out-of-body experience. Everybody was doing these hands-on manipulations, my husband and my doula. But I could not do anything but just sway. I was standing, swaying back and forth in my living room, arms up. Why were my arms up? I have no idea, but they were up. I was doing that horse lips, breathing. Yep. It was just what my body did intuitively. I just, at that point, wasn't really getting a break. It was just insane. So that was intense. Out-of-body. I cannot replicate that level of pain in my head. There's just no doing that, but I knew that even if I needed to transfer, which I wasn't planning, but even if I needed to do that for pain management, I couldn't sit down in a car. I was at that point, so I thought to myself, the only way to this is through this. Like that is it. You've got to do it. We're just going to do it. So I knew that in my head. At no point did the pain concern me though. I mean, was it so intense and crazy? Yeah, but it was never like, there's something wrong.Meagan: Uh-huh. Yeah.Liz: So that was really good. I didn't think anything negative during that time except that I was in an intense amount of pain. But it was like pain with a purpose, if that makes sense.Meagan: Productive.Liz: Yes, yes. In the meantime, my doula had set up a birth pool because I definitely wanted to try to be in the pool when I gave birth, but I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the water since I didn't really like the shower experience. It took a while because the hose kept slipping off of our faucet or whatever, so they had to boil pots of water. I just remember my doula walking back and forth. In the meantime, they did call my midwife. Somebody did, and she showed up with her assistant. So there were like three or four adults trying to hold me in transition or do some sort of physical manipulations and then pour hot water into this birth pool.Meagan: Oh my.Liz: Yeah, it was very interesting. But yeah, my contractions, at that point, were 30 seconds apart and they were lasting a minute and a half. It was intense, yes. But the pool was finally filled at 6:45 in the morning on Wednesday, and the only reason why I know that is because we have pictures of me right before I got into the pool. When I got in, my body just relaxed. I didn't think I was going to be wanting to be in a supine position at all, beyond my bottom at all because I couldn't have even tried to sit on land. But once I got into the pool, everything relaxed and it was like, oh, this is what I needed. This is what I needed. I needed some relief. I also kept telling everybody how tired I was. Anybody who walked past me, I was like, "I'm so tired." They were like, "Yeah, no. We know. We know, but we're going to keep working."Meagan: Yeah.Liz: But yeah, I was in there for a really short time and I had heard of this before, but to actually experience it is next level. I had the fetal ejection reflex.Meagan: Oh yeah.Liz: So I did not even have another cervical check. Nothing. My body just started pushing that baby down and out. I couldn't have stopped it if I wanted to. I was making the most primal sounds. I have video of it, like low guttural sounds. It was probably going on for about 15 minutes. My son walked down, I heard his little pitter-patter of his feet, and he walked down. My stairs go right into my living room where I was. And the whole time the most nerve-wracking part of having a home birth for me was that I knew he was going to be home with us, and there really wasn't an adult aside from my husband and my birth support team who I wanted in my birthing space. So there was no other option of anybody to take care of him besides my husband if it came to that. I think in the back of my head, that was the most anxiety-inducing part of this.Meagan: Yeah.Liz: So down he walks. And of course, he's hiding. He sees these three other adults in our living room. I'm in the tub groaning.Meagan: Yeah.Liz: He's a little nervous. He's a little guy. Fortunately, I think it was either the birth assistant or my doula handed him his little digital camera that I had actually bought as a gift from the baby for him. Yeah. She encouraged him. She's like, "Why don't you take some pictures? Take some pictures of mommy and daddy." The minute that she said that and he started to do that, he calmed down and just wanted to be in it and part of it.Meagan: Yeah.Liz: Yeah. And I told him, "Mommy's making some interesting noises, but I'm okay. I'm safe. I'm okay." And he was just really good about it. I feel like all that anxiety went away, thankfully.Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.Liz: Yeah. I noticed my midwife was starting to gather her supplies and in my head, I actually probably said it out loud like, "Wait, we're doing this here?" And she was like, "Yeah." I was like, "I'm having a baby here in this room." She's like, "Yeah." I was like, "I don't need to go to the hospital?" She's like, "No, no, no. You're okay."And, yeah. My body just kept pushing the baby out. And it was an hour, not even an hour. It was less than an hour from when I first got into the pool until my daughter was out. My husband got to reach down and put his hands there. As she came out, he felt her really chubby cheeks. She has big cheeks like me and her ear, and brought her up to my chest. I was just in shock. I couldn't believe that I had done that. But then, of course, I look and I see that she's a girl. I just knew my mom had sent me her. That's how I felt.Meagan: Oh, that just gave me the chills.Liz: Thank you.Meagan: Oh my gosh. That is so beautiful. I love that your son was able to be involved, and you could feel your mom. Oh huge. Congrats. Liz: Thank you so much.Meagan: Yes. Liz: My mom's name was Faith, and so my daughter's middle name is Faye because everybody who loved my mom called her Faye. She was Aunt Faye to everybody, every cousin. So my daughter's name is Luna Faye. So she is her namesake, and she's amazing. And like you said, I can't believe she's almost two. I can't believe this was almost two years ago.Meagan: Two years ago. I know. We get so many submissions and sometimes we can't get to everybody, but it does take a while sometimes. I'm so glad that you were able to come and still record your beautiful stories and give us so much detail of each one and guidance, and the experience. Yeah. I'm just so happy for you.Thank you so much. I don't think I'll ever come down from that high, that birth high. Like, I think I'll be riding it out for the rest of my life. I'm not sure I'm going to have any more children. I think we're pretty much done, but I would love to give birth like that a thousand more times. It was the redemptive story that I needed. It helped so much with my previous birth trauma, and it made me feel so strong. I have never felt more strong and more powerful than that experience. I don't think I ever will.Meagan: Yeah, well, and there's so much that went into it-- time preparing, research, finding this team, and then even dealing with the prodromal. I mean, that could be defeating within itself. You're so tired, but then you just kept going.Liz: Yeah, I kept doing the things. I mean, that was one thing that my doula and my midwife both commented on. They were like, "You did everything that you could, and you tried to control everything that you can control, and look what happened. That's amazing."Meagan: Yeah. Thank you again so much.Liz: Thank you. I'm so happy to have been able to talk to you and share my story.Meagan: Me too. Do you have any final advice to any of our listeners?Liz: I think my ultimate advice for any birthing person is to find a provider that you align with. I think they can really make or break that experience. No matter where you choose to birth or where you wind up birthing, have that provider that you trust, that you feel like you could have open conversations with. If you say you want a natural birth, they're not going to scoff at that, and somebody who's going to have conversations with you instead of talking at you.Meagan: Yeah, I agree so much. I want to add to just vet them. If they're feeling good at first, okay, stay. And if something's happening, keep going. Keep asking the questions, and if something's not feeling right, don't hesitate to change.Liz: I know. And I not only hesitated, but I knew I had to change with my first provider, and I just didn't. I think at that point, I was so tired.Meagan: Yeah well, it's daunting. It's a daunting thing. I mean, I was there too, so no shame in it. It's just hard when you realize looking back, oh, I could have. I should have done something different. I didn't, but that's okay. We've learned, we've grown, and we've had healing experiences moving forward.Liz: 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

This podcast episode contains potentially triggering content related to sexual trauma, including discussions of abuse, assault, and recovery. Listener discretion is advised. In this episode of The Homebirth Midwife Podcast, Sarah and Charli answer listener questions about home birth after cesarean (HBAC) and trauma-informed care in birth. They unpack the risks, safety considerations, and holistic midwifery support for those planning a VBAC in a home setting, as well as compassionate strategies for birthing with PTSD, vaginismus, or a history of sexual trauma. Learn how individualized midwifery care fosters empowerment, informed choice, and a deeply supportive birth experience. Whether you're exploring out-of-hospital birth, postpartum healing, or holistic prenatal care, this episode is filled with insight and encouragement for your journey. If you like what you get here, you'll like our online childbirth education course even more. It's a more detailed look at the stages of labor, how to cope, and what to do along the way to set yourself up for success. It also shows partners what to expect from their point of view and what they can do to support you in labor. Stay Connected With Us! Website: https://hearthandhomemidwifery.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/HearthandHomeMidwifery Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HearthandHomeMidwifery YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hearthandhomemidwifery1206 The Homebirth Midwife Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of midwifery, medicine, or other professional health care services. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast are at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

In this powerful episode, we hear the story of Alice, who shares her brave journey through two contrasting pregnancies and the impact of intimate partner violence on her mental health. Co-host Sarah joins as one of our VBAC Link certified doulas to discuss the importance of mental health awareness, especially during pregnancy and postpartum. This episode dives into the significance of having a strong support system and the need for open conversations about postpartum mood disorders and trauma-informed care. Alice is a beautiful example of resilience, healing, and the strength that women possess.National Domestic Violence HotlineNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Women of Strength. Hello. How are you doing? I hope you are having an amazing week. We have another story coming your way today, and we actually have a co-host today, my friend Sarah. Hello, Sarah.Sarah: Hi.Meagan: Thank you so much for being here today.Sarah: Yeah, I'm super excited to be here.Meagan: I love having our VBAC Link doulas on the podcast here and there. It's fun to not only share you with the world and let people know who you are and where you are, but really just to hear from you guys and hear your educational pieces and just have you guys in the story and giving your input, and I just love it. So thank you so much for being here.Sarah: Absolutely.Meagan: Guys, today, like I said, we have an HBAC coming your way. But I did want to let you know that today's episode may have mention of partner abuse and suicide. I really, really, really think it is so important to really not mask stories and share the rawness of people's stories because I think the rawness and the real story is what makes us who we are today and really creates the story to be true. I just wanted to give you guys a heads-up. But I'm going to turn the time over to Sarah. She is in replace of our review today doing an educational piece and actually talking about mental health.Sarah: Yeah. Hi. So again, I'm super excited to be here. I'm Sarah Marie Bilder. I'm located in the upstate South Carolina area and I do birth and postpartum doula work. I really just wanted to cover the topic of mental health because in the story that we're gonna hear today, it's pretty relevant and it's one of those things that aren't often talked about. I don't wanna say that that's not talked about because when we say that it kind of, I feel, diminishes the people that are talking about it. It's important to really highlight when we are talking about it. But a lot of the times when we're preparing for pregnancy, we're focused on the physical aspects or maybe mindfulness or something along those lines, but we don't really dig deep into postpartum mood disorders or when there are mood disorders that are still occurring in pregnancy or even that might exist before we're pregnant that will still continue throughout pregnancy. So it's really important to make sure that we're having these conversations and that we're being open and honest with the people around us. Maybe if you aren't in therapy or have somebody sort of set up along those lines, you still have a close friend or a support person that you can be sharing this information with or really opening up about the feelings that you're having because they are very real feelings, and even into postpartum, it goes more than just the baby blues. There are a lot of different things that can be occurring and happening that it's really important to continue to have those support people. So as a doula, this is something that I make sure my clients are aware of and open to, and I try to be as much of a support person as possible, but knowing when professionals need to step in and when situations need to be handled I think is really key. So making sure that you have people to talk to, making sure when you listen to these stories that you are considering different situations and different aspects and that we're talking to our mom friends too. If you're not the one currently going through it, if you're hearing somebody else going through different situations, we're continuing to stay open and stay together and stay supportive.Meagan: Yes, I love that. Thank you so much for that message. I also want to add through to it that after we have our babies, we are given a six-week follow-up. You do not have to wait six weeks to talk to your provider. If you are feeling these feelings, you do not have to wait until then. You one, can get in sooner. But two, there are other resources, and we will make sure to have those resources shared at the end of this episode and in our show notes. So if you or anyone that you know and love are experiencing these things, please know that there is more help. Okay, Alice and Sarah, thank you so much again for being here today. I want to turn the time over to you, Ms. Alice.Alice: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here and share my story.Meagan: Me too.Alice: So I have had two pregnancies, two births, and they were both very, very different. My first pregnancy, when I think about when I found out I was pregnant with my first, it was the lowest point of my life. I was nine months into being married to my abuser and had really lost my entire sense of self. I was at this point where I just didn't understand how I had gotten there. I didn't understand how I had married him. I found myself hospitalized from a suicide attempt. I also had no social support. I had no family in the area. I had no job. My husband was an attorney, and I relied on his friends and his family for emotional support. I was hospitalized and felt very lost. About a week into my hospitalization, the staff, who were constantly running tests and blood draws, pulled me out of a group where I was learning how to deeply breathe, and to my shock, told me I was pregnant. I had no idea. It was just a very out-of-body experience being hospitalized for mental illness. Some people can find it really helpful in healing, and it can also be a trauma in itself, and it was that for me. So to be in this setting where I had no freedom, and then these people were telling me what was inside of my body. It was-- I couldn't process it. I was very disconnected to my pregnancy at first. The next five days of being hospitalized, I was presented with a lot of information about pregnancy and intimate partner violence. It's information that I think is really important for providers to know, but it was presented to me as a new pregnant person in an abusive relationship in a way that felt really coercive and fear-mongering. They told me that the leading cause of death in the United States for pregnant women was intimate partner homicide. Meagan: Okay. Alice: Yeah. I remember one provider telling me, "Your options are to terminate the pregnancy or to leave him now. It's our professional opinion that if you stay in this relationship while pregnant, it's very likely that he will kill you before you give birth." Meagan: Gosh. Alice: I remember feeling so shocked and afraid. I knew I wanted to be a mom. I think the decision to continue a pregnancy or not when you're faced with, it's always a difficult decision. It was for me because I was afraid, and I knew I wanted to be a mom. I also knew that I couldn't leave yet. The leaving is really complicated, and it's not a direct line to safety. I remember feeling when they were talking to me about leaving, like, "Well, you could go here or you could call this person," thinking like, don't you think I've already thought of this? Don't you think I've thought of every way to keep myself safe? Now I was pregnant, and I wanted the assumption that I was making decisions that were best for me and my baby. My pregnancy was difficult. I had hyperemesis and I had this pregnancy rash that was really itchy my whole pregnancy. They kept testing my bile levels, and they were all normal and never knew what was going on. I have scars on my body from scratching. I'm pretty sure now that it was just stress and breaking out in hives throughout my pregnancy. I had broken ribs in my third trimester. When I think about that pregnancy, I remember it being a time of suffering and fear. I feel sad for myself when I think of myself during that time experiencing pregnancy like that. At the same time, I had an incredible midwifery team based out of a hospital. I can't say enough about how supportive and trauma-informed they were. They never pressured me to leave. They asked questions like, "What can we do to help? How can we make you safer?" They trusted that I was doing everything I could and that I knew how to keep myself safe and how to keep my baby safe. I was living with my in-laws when I went into labor with my first. I had moved in and out of our home depending on how safe it was. I didn't have anywhere to go other than his parents'. I was living with them and my waters had been leaking for a few days and I knew. I was like, I know I'm not peeing this much all the time. I knew that my waters were leaking, but I didn't want to go to the hospital yet because I hadn't started contracting, and I knew they would induce. I started having contractions at midnight. I went in about 24 hours later. It was really slow. I tried everything I could to get things moving, but it just wouldn't speed up. I ended up being induced. I don't necessarily regret the decision to be induced. It did lead to a C-section, but when I went into the hospital, I didn't know what home I would go to. I wanted to be there. I remember thinking, I want to stay here. If that means I have to get induced, that means I get induced. But I felt much safer being in a hospital at that point. They started the induction process. I had a doula come, and I also had my therapist come. She was with me through my entire labor at the hospital and birth for-- she was there maybe 45 hours. We had made a contract and it's pretty innovative to have my therapist there as a support person at my birth. I think it's an induction story that we all know my body wasn't ready. I was on Pitocin for a very long time. Baby's heart rate started decelerating, not tolerating labor, and made the decision to have a Cesarean. It wasn't the birth that I wanted, but it was the safety that I wanted. I had support there. They made sure to tell me specific things that were in my birth plan that were triggers for me. When I was laid on the table for the C-section, someone got very close to my ear and said, "No one's tying you down. I know your arms are out. It might feel like that, but know you are not restrained." At one point, the anesthesiologist started petting my head because he was sitting by my head. The obstetrician who was just there to do my C-section, wasn't there for very long. She had read my birth plan and said to the male anesthesiologist, "She doesn't like her head to be touched." He stopped. I felt very seen. I did skin-to-skin in the delivery room. My therapist was in the operating room with me. It wasn't a terrible Cesarean experience. So postpartum was pretty hard. When I left the hospital, I was living alone with my baby. My in-laws agreed to encourage my husband to live with them so that we could be safe from him during the postpartum time. But living alone after a C-section with no family or friends and no doula was very, very difficult. My husband had substance-use disorder, and he took my pain medication when I got home. I just remember being in a lot of pain. I also was in this haze of falling in love with my baby. It still shocks me that I did not experience postpartum depression with my first. I was depressed through my pregnancy, and I also think I was in such a survival mode during the first year of my first baby's life that I didn't have any space to process or space to grieve. I was surviving. One year after giving birth to my first, I did file for divorce to get a restraining order and safely flee with my child, but it was a very long, difficult road.Meagan: If you are someone who is experiencing domestic violence during pregnancy, postpartum or just in general, there is help. You can reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233.Alice: So that was my first birth experience. Fast forward to four years later, I've memorialized the day that I found out that I was pregnant with my first because it was such the lowest point of my life. I think of it as this time where I was ready for my life to end. I'm gonna cry, but instead my life doubled and it led to this beautiful little human who I get to be a mom to and really changed the trajectory of my entire life, so I call it my life day. Four years later, on my life day, I was in a loving relationship with the most gentle man. I still am in that relationship. I felt like things were a little wonky with my body. I woke up and took a pregnancy test and saw on the exact same day that the hospital told me that I was pregnant, four years later, I had a positive pregnancy test. I was in a home that I owned, a home that was safe and filled with love and a relationship that was safe and loving. It was just so different. I went and I laid in bed with my then 3-year-old and said, "We're gonna be just fine." And I knew that we were going to be. My second pregnancy was also different. It was very healing. I experienced a lot of sadness again because I think I had space to grieve the first time. It also happened because I got pregnant right around the same time. It was like this weird re-do of my first one now with a loving partner and safety and getting to be pregnant. I think about what I wanted for my body and how to stay healthy. I didn't take a single vitamin during my first pregnancy. I was just focused on, how do I stay safe today? I can't even count all the supplements I was on this time. I knew pretty soon that I wanted a home birth. I feel like I was pretty educated on VBAC. I had been listening to The VBAC Link since I was pregnant with my first. I don't know why because I hadn't had a C-section yet, but I had loved the podcast and I knew the rates of repeat Cesareans. I also work in labor and delivery units and I know that they're very risk-averse. I felt like it was the safest option to birth at home. I also felt the weight of how precious it was to have a safe home that I could birth in. It was very meaningful for me to give birth in a space that was mine and was safe. My partner, who knew nothing about home birth, I broached the subject with him early in pregnancy was like, "I want to let you know. I don't know what you think about this, but I want to have a home birth." And he was just like, "Great." I was pretty surprised that he was so on board, but he trusted me, and he trusted me the whole way through. I did not have hyperemesis the second time. I didn't have the rash problem. I didn't have the broken ribs. I did have a lot of pain from pubic symphysis. Yeah, the second half of my pregnancy was like very difficult to even walk. I broke my pelvis in my teenage years and was a little unsure of how that healed. I broke it in two places. I have had this fear of, what if there's a bunch of scar tissue around a bone and baby's head couldn't get through? So I had that fear as well going into my home birth. My midwife was very skilled and very kind. It was a different experience of prenatal care. I also really loved my hospital prenatal care. I think given that I was in a high-risk situation, I loved my hospital prenatal care. It was exactly what I needed. And in my second birth, my home birth midwife was exactly what I needed. In my second birth, I went over my due date by 11 days which was such a mind game. I was so over it. I was just this crazy person who was doing everything that I could to get this baby out of me, but also was like, "No, I wanna be holistic. I don't to be induced. I'm not gonna--," so there were two parts of myself that were battling each other. But I, finally went into labor. My mother was here as well. My family lives far away, but my mother came to support me this time. It was just my mom and my partner and my three-year-old. I labored at home. I had my music. It was just a lovely experience of laboring and of joining in this experience that so many women have had of pain and beauty and endurance and strength. I felt so connected to the world and to women and to my mom. My midwife came. I started laboring at 7:00 PM. At 2:00 PM the next day, my midwife came. I labored in the tub. I had a blow-up birthing pool. I felt like labor was pretty straightforward until the last five hours that I was fully dilated, but he just wasn't descending. The midwife checked me and said that his head was stuck on my pubic bone. He was stuck there for five hours. It was a lot of pushing, but I wasn't really pushing the right way.It felt like contractions that just weren't producing anything. It wasn't opening anything. It wasn't moving him down. It was just nothing. I started to get really discouraged. We joke a lot about how belligerent I was towards the end. Right before I gave birth, I got very bossy and I decided it wasn't go going to happen. Like, "He's not going to descend. I'm over this. Call 911. Tell them to bring drugs. I need them here now." My midwife was like, "That's not how it works." I was like "No, call the police. Tell them to bring narcotics. I need to stop feeling this." I was being ridiculous. My midwife was encouraging me saying, "He is coming down. I know you're not feeling it, but I feel his head and it's right there. I think you're gonna have a car baby if we get in the car. and I don't want that to happen." I'm not a rude person, but I guess in labor, I am. But I stuck my finger in my vagina, and I was like, "Well, I don't feel him." They were loading up to go to the hospital because I was so insistent that this was not happening. I was standing in the living room and I said, "Wait." My partner was like, "She said wait." I could feel him coming down. It was the first time I really felt his head coming through my birth canal. It was such a different feeling. In 30 minutes, I pushed him out standing in our living room. It was just beautiful and lovely, and he was on my chest. My 3-year-old was there. Baby was on my chest. I was lying on my partner's chest. Nothing else mattered in that moment. Yeah. It was a lovely, beautiful, healing experience to come full-circle. I also gave birth on the four-year anniversary of filing for divorce and getting a restraining order from my abuser. It's like all of these things lined up just to give me this healing experience of new life.Meagan: Yeah. Seriously, these milestones that you're able to overcome from the past and replace with joy and beauty and excitement and healing. Oh, I have chills through the whole episode. How about you, Sarah?Sarah: Yeah. There's just so many parts of your story that are so unique and so fitting. There's so much strength in it, and there's so much emotion in listening and feeling all of the things that obviously you were going through. And some were external, but a lot were very internal. Thank you for sharing your story. The ability to be able to share your story takes so much strength in itself. Yeah.Meagan: We could see that and could see it in your eyes. You had my eyes welling up a few times. I was just feeling all the emotion as you were sharing and all the heartache in the beginning that you were sharing. And I loved how you were like, "I was in this. I was going through this really terrible, scary experience," but you were able to stay in this haze of bonding and you two together, you two thriving and surviving in this really unfortunate circumstance, but I am so glad that you were able to have that and grow and then now have this safe, loving home, and two cute babes.Alice: Yeah, they are cute.Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And although your story's so unique, it's also in very many of our VBAC stories. We have that traumatic experience and then it leads to that very healing experience. I think it's just one of those things. You had mentioned having that space to process and getting out of that survival mode too. I think that's really amazing to honor that and mention that because sometimes we are just in that survival mode, and we don't allow ourself or we don't have the ability to give ourselves that time to really process what is occurring and what is happening. And a lot of the time we just need to do that, and we need to allow ourselves the time to do some fear-clearing and release a lot of that anxiety and other fears that are happening and going on.Meagan: Also on the end of the story, when you were talking about five hours where baby was just kind of hanging out there and you were stuck there pushing, but not really pushing, but in this weird, funky spot in labor, we have seen this where people are pushing and they're like, "Your baby's not descending." We are actually given a diagnosis of failure to descend as a reason for Cesarean, but then simply standing up and moving-- and I'm sure you were moving and grooving along the way, but it just sometimes is one specific motion. It might have been the quickness of you standing up like, "Okay, I'm going. We're going to do this," that did it. We don't know.I love seeing too that you were saying, "I had a broken pelvis in the past. I don't really know how that healed." In a lot of ways, a lot of providers would be like, "You had a broken pelvis. You don't have a proven pelvis. I don't know. I don't think I'm comfortable with this." But then here you did it, right? But that movement and I don't know, I just feel like there's so much power within our bodies that it's just incredible, and I love seeing that. And then your partner was like, "Wait, hold on. Don't go anywhere. I think we're staying." I love that that is exactly how it unfolded and that your other baby was able to be there with you, and just so many amazing things about your story. Thank you so much for being vulnerable and just being here with us.Alice: Thank you. 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

Thank you so much to Alice for sharing the beautiful story of her unexpected HBAC following a previous caesarean. Alice so kindly has offered to share some meditations with you to help you through your pregnancy and labour. To get a copy of these meditations please send Alice a DM on Instagram (link below) and she will send them directly to you free of charge.  Follow Alive on Instagram here www.instagram.com/alicesaritherapy To learn more about my doula packages visit https://www.thenurturenest.co.uk/doula-services To purchase one of my courses, please visit https://www.thenurturenest.co.uk/courses If you have benefitted from this podcast and would like to say thanks, you can now buy me a coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thenurturenest View my birthy book recommendations here https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/influencer-e2ad919d  Follow me on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/the_nurture_nest/ Follow me on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/thenurturenesthypno Get 10% off your birth pool here https://go.referralcandy.com/share/JKHGBJ3 Get 10% off a BabyCare TENS Machine. USE CODE 10NURTURENEST http://babycaretens.com?afmc=46

Julia knew something was off during her first pregnancy and birth experience. She knew she didn't feel right about consenting to a Cesarean, but it wasn't until she started diving into research that she realized how much her care lacked informed consent. She discovered options that should have been offered to her that never were.Julia's research led her to choosing the midwifery model of care in a home birth setting. She felt in control of her experience and free to birth the way she felt she needed to. Meagan and Julia discuss stats on uterine rupture, stillbirth, continuous fetal monitoring, induction, due dates, and how our birthing culture can highly influence what we think is safe versus what scientific evidence actually tells us. Evidence-Based Birth: The Evidence on Due DatesThe Business of Being BornNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello. Women of Strength I am so excited for today's guest. Our friend, Julia, is from Texas. She is a wife and a stay-at-home mother living in, it Spring, Texas, Julia?Julia: Spring, Texas.Meagan: Close to Houston, yes, with her two sons. And she has had a Cesarean and then an HBAC. We get a lot of questions in our inbox every day, but a really common question is dates. "Hey, I'm 40 weeks. My doctor is telling me I had to have my baby by tomorrow or even approaching 39 weeks." People are being told they have to have their babies or really bad things will happen. And Julia's story is proof that you don't have to have a baby by 40 weeks or 41 weeks, would you say? Almost 42 weeks is what you were. So we are excited to hear this story. And I know if you are one that goes past your due date and you're getting that pressure, you're definitely gonna wanna listen. Julia: Thank you so much for having me, Meagan, I'm really, really happy to be here.Meagan: I'm so happy that you are here. I would just love to have you share your stories.Julia: Okay, so my firstborn, he came during the height of the COVID pandemic. It was August 2020.I just saw my OB who I had been seeing for regular gynecology visits. And from the very first appointment, it just, I just kind of got an off feeling. She had seen a small subchorionic hematoma on my ultrasound at my very first appointment at eight weeks. And she just told me, "Don't Google this. It's going to scare you." She basically just said, "Just enjoy being pregnant now because when you come back next week, you may not be." So as a first-time mom, it was obviously pretty upsetting and caused a lot of anxiety. When I went back for my next appointment, she just kind of shrugged it off after she saw the ultrasound. She just said, "It cleared up on its own." There really wasn't any explanation of how it resolved.But that being said, that start to my prenatal care kind of set the tone for the rest of that pregnancy and birth. From then on there was just a lot of fear-mongering going on, and a lot of problems were brought up that really never turned out to be an issue. Around 20 weeks at the anatomy scan, they saw that my son was in the bottom 10th percentile.She had said that she classified that as IUGR, intrauterine growth restriction. We had a lot of extra testing done. Everything was normal. I felt confident and very comfortable just waiting it out. And that really wasn't what she wanted.Actually, starting around 35 weeks, she had started talking about delivering early. I was pressured at each appointment by my OB and the nurses to stay that day and deliver solely because of his size, even though everything was looking great on the monitors. Keep in mind, you know, during COVID, I wasn't able to have my husband or anyone with me during these appointments. And so just being asked that question each time I came in as a first-time mom by myself was just really hard and made me second guess a lot of things and second guess my intuition. I had explained that, "I think he's just a small baby. He needs more time to grow."She basically just said at my 38-week appointment if I didn't deliver that day, it would not be her fault if my baby died and that she or the hospital was--Meagan: What?! Julie: Right?Meagan: She said that she or the hospital, if I walk out that day, they're not liable if something happens because I'm going against her recommendations. I was even seeing a high-risk doctor as well at that point. And even he was saying, "Everything's looking fine. There's no problem with waiting if you want to."The reason she wanted to schedule the C-section because he was breech. I knew that I wasn't even going to have the opportunity to go into spontaneous labor. There were really no alternatives presented at the time. I knew nothing about out-of-hospital birth or about midwives. She offered an ECV, but she said she didn't recommend it because of his size.She didn't really explain why. So I just kind of felt backed into a corner. I remember I had left the office that day at 38 weeks and called my husband immediately and explained what she had said. We felt like, "Okay, well, I guess, we obviously don't want our baby to die, so maybe we need to just stay." I remember pushing my gut feeling aside the whole time. As they were prepping me, I just felt, This isn't right." I wanted to give my baby more time to grow and also to flip so that I wouldn't be backed into a C-section. Had I known then what I know now, I definitely would have opted for a home birth with my midwife who's trained in breach delivery.Just at the time with COVID, I didn't have the resources or the information, so we went through with the C-section that ended in a four-day hospital stay. I didn't sleep at all. Meagan, I'm not even kidding you. I did not sleep those four days. The nurses were really concerned about the baby's size, even though he was growing. He was actually back to his birth weight by the time we were discharged.But I'll never forget this one-Meagan: That's quick!Julie: Right? I know. And so there was so much fear-mongering, so much uncertainty by medical staff, despite how great my baby was doing. And I remember this nurse frantically coming into the room just a few hours after my C-section with this Medella hospital-grade pump. She was just like, "You need to start pumping now on top of breastfeeding because your baby's small. He's not going to grow."It just kind of left me feeling like, I feel confident in what I'm doing, but now all these medical professionals are telling me like, I'm in danger, my baby's in danger. It triggered a lot of feelings of postpartum anxiety. I really struggled that first year. And so it wasn't a very good experience.I just felt like my power had been taken away in the birthing process and felt defeated and like I didn't have a say for my first birth.Meagan: Yeah, I was just listening to an episode the other day, not on our podcast, on another podcast about that experience after baby is born and that postpartum within the hospital and how crazy it is that sleep is one of the best things we can get when it comes to energy, milk production, getting our babies fed and helping them grow, and doing all these things. But then we're not allowed that time. And then on top of it, it's all the fear-mongering and the doubt when it's like we should be being built up like, "Oh my gosh, look how good you're doing. Look how good this baby's doing. Look how good you're doing. Let's keep doing this." Instead of making you doubt that what you're doing isn't good enough and not letting you sleep and doing all these things. It's just weird to me. It doesn't make sense.Julia: Right, and as a first-time mom, you're just like, okay, they know what's best, obviously. I'm going to listen to them and what do I know about birth? They're the doctors. But yeah, it was just really eye-opening, and I really knew I wanted a completely different experience the next time around.Meagan: Yeah, I don't blame you. I don't blame you for wanting a different experience.Julia: So after I had my C section, pretty soon after that, I started digging and doing a lot of research and realized I felt really cheated by the lack of informed consent. I had mentioned that my doctor just had said, "You need a C-section because he's breech."I had no idea that there were even midwives and out-of-hospital birth options where they delivered breech vaginally and not only that, but were highly trained and qualified to do so. I had no idea that in other parts of the world of similar economic status to the US that they were routinely delivering breech babies vaginally with better outcomes than we have here in the US hospitals. So I really didn't feel like there was informed consent there. Even the fact that she didn't even want to try the ECV was upsetting to me. I just felt like I really wish I would have done more research at the time. But I just put all my energy into this next birth. I knew even before I got pregnant that I wanted a VBAC.Pretty early on in the process of my research, I became really fascinated with physiological birth and I knew that I really wanted to experience that. For someone who may not be familiar with that term, physiological birth is natural unmedicated childbirth with no intervention unless medically necessary. It sees birth as a safe biological function rather than a medical event or something that that's inherently dangerous which is how I felt I was treated my whole first pregnancy and birth. I felt like a walking hazard, to be honest, when in reality I was an extremely healthy 25-year-old, first-time mom with a healthy baby with no issues. So the fact that I was gaslit into thinking there was a lot of danger was sad. So I knew that for my next birth I wanted to do a physiological birth and I knew that it would kind of be a fight to achieve in the hospital. I did a lot of research, I watched The Business of Being Born. I read a lot of natural childbirth books. I also knew that on top of the regular hospital policies, I would have some excess restrictions because of the fact that I was a VBAC.Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Julia: I did go back to that same OB at first. I presented my birth plan early on to her and it included things like I didn't want an IV. I wanted freedom to eat or drink. I didn't want any drugs whatsoever for pain relief. I didn't want them pushing an epidural. I would have liked a water birth, but I knew that wouldn't have been possible in the hospital. But I at least would have liked water immersion in labor, minimal cervical checks. I wanted to go into spontaneous labor. I wanted no coached pushing and fully delayed cord clamping.I could tell, right away she was more so just VBAC-tolerant rather than supportive. She really used a lot of fear-mongering. Right away she mentioned the uterine rupture risk. She had said, I think she had said she had just had a mom die from a VBAC not too long ago.Meagan: Goodness. Holy moly.Julia: Without any explanation. Who knows where she was going with that? But she had also said, it may be better to just have a repeat C-section because with the risk of rupture, you may need a hysterectomy after giving birth. She commonly used the word TOLAC which also I didn't really like. I didn't want to feel like I was having to try. I felt like I'm planning a VBAC. I don't need to try for it. It is what it is. I wanted someone to encourage me. She really also highly, highly recommended I got an epidural because she said, "Well, with your increased risk of rupture, if something should happen, then they're just gonna have to knock me out."She also said, "Unmedicated moms tear the worst," which was not at all the case for me. She was saying that because it hurts so bad that you just can't control your pushing. I knew all of this was not true. I was kind of in a funny position because I didn't want to be fighting with her, but I knew the evidence in the back of my mind and all of that scary language. I knew it was not evidence-based. I really wanted someone on my team who was really going to believe in me, who knew the evidence, and who believed in my ability to have a VBAC.  I didn't want to spend all of my energy and labor fighting for this VBAC and for this birth experience that I knew was possible and that I knew that I deserved.My heart really had always deep down been set on a home birth from the very beginning. I loved watching home birth videos and hearing positive home birth stories. I just loved everything about it and also about the midwifery model of care and how much more comprehensive that was. I had heard about a local group of midwives on a Facebook group that I'm in for holistic moms in my area. I found out that this group of midwives offered a HypnoBirthing class. So my husband and I signed up for that. We took the six-week course and we just never looked back after that. We knew that a home birth VBAC would be the way to go. I felt deep in my heart confident about it and that's really what I wanted. I just knew I had found my dream birth team.My midwife was just amazing and I just really couldn't imagine birthing anywhere other than in my own home with her and my husband by my side and someone that didn't look at me differently because of my previous Cesarean.Meagan: Right. And I love that you just pointed that out. Someone who didn't look at me differently because of my previous Cesarean. This is the problem, not the problem. It's one of one of the many problems when it comes to providers looking at VBAC moms. We talk about this in our VBAC course. We should just be someone going in and having a baby, but we are not viewed that way. And it's extremely frustrating because not only do they not view us that way, they make us know and feel that they don't view us that way.Julia: Right, right.Meagan: It's just, it feels crummy.Julia: Absolutely. We knew we were making the right decision. I was really excited about the whole thing. That was another thing that I talked to my OB about. I was like, "I'm excited to be in labor. I want to welcome all these sensations of birth. I know it's going to be hard work, but that experience means something to me and I want that." And she had said, "Well, if you ask other moms who had been through labor, they would say it's painful, it's hard." She was basically saying, I shouldn't want this birth experience. I just didn't want to be fighting that or dealing with someone who had this view on birth that it's just this dangerous medical event. I didn't want to go through feeling defeated like I did last time.Meagan: Absolutely. Good for you for recognizing that and then doing what you needed to do to not have that experience.Julia: Right? Thank you.So I had mentioned that I really wanted to go into spontaneous labor. I didn't want to be induced at all. That's another reason why I'm so thankful that I was with my midwife because I went almost all the way to 43 weeks pregnant. I went into labor at 42 weeks and 5 days in the middle of the night. Had I had been with my OB, I'm positive that I would have had to deliver much earlier and I would have probably been scheduled for a repeat C-section. So I'm just really happy that I was with my midwife and I felt really confident about waiting. I had NSTs and BPPs, non-stress tests and biophysical profiles done daily starting at 42 weeks just to monitor baby's health and to make sure that everything is normal and it was.So we just opted to wait for spontaneous labor. I'm really glad that I did so that I could go through with the home birth.Meagan: Absolutely. What you were saying, yeah, I know I probably would have been scheduled Cesarean and definitely would have been pressured. I mean, even if you would have said no, the pressure would have been thick, especially going over 41 weeks.Julia: Right.Meagan: And then, let alone 42.Julia: Right. Yeah. The pressure was there. Everyone was well intentioned, asking, "Have you had your baby yet?" But I was getting these questions as early as like 38 weeks, 39 weeks. I'm like, "Whoa, I'm not even at my due date yet."Everyone was just excited to meet the baby and had friends asking about that. But my immediate family was so supportive and I'm so, so happy that I had that support because just feeling that from my midwife and from my parents and my husband, knowing that they all really believed in me and we were confident with waiting. As long as everything looked good with baby, that was really what was most important. So I just kind of tuned everything else out and tried to relax as much as possible.We just went out to dinner a few times and cherished these last couple weeks as a family of three. It finally happened in the middle of the night at 42 weeks and 5 days. I remember when the contractions were first starting. I'd had some contractions on and off for the past few weeks, but nothing consistent. So I just kind of thought, okay, well, this is just some Braxton Hicks or something like that.I noticed that around 2:00 AM, they started getting more consistent. I told my husband and they were getting more intense and a little closer together. We called our midwife around 6:00 AM and she was like, "Yeah. Sounds like you're in early labor." I was just so, so happy and grateful to be in labor.Yes, it was hard work, but I can honestly say I really enjoyed the experience. I thought it was extremely empowering. I just remember thanking God through the surges. We called them surges in HypnoBirthing. Just knowing the awesome work that my body was doing from within to give birth to my baby. I really, really enjoyed the freedom of just being able to eat and drink in labor freely wherever I wanted in my home without any restricting policies. I wasn't tethered to any IVs or monitors. I think that's another thing. In the hospital, that would have added anxiety seeing the monitor constantly. We know that continuous fetal monitoring isn't really evidence-based and leads to more C-sections. I knew in the hospital that would have been something that would have been required so I'm really glad that that wasn't the case at home. I just think the freedom and the autonomy is really what helped my labor to progress so smoothly without any complications.There weren't people coming in and out of my room, and I just really enjoyed the whole experience. Listening to birth affirmations helped me. I was swaying through the surges. My husband had helped me put up twinkle fairy lights in our room, and we had some flickering votive candles on my dresser. It just created this really nice ambiance and a calming atmosphere.It just felt so good to know that my husband really, truly believed in my ability to do this. I mean, I really have to give him a shout-out because he was right there with me not only through all of labor, but when I knew that I wanted a VBAC from the very beginning, he was right there with me reading all the natural childbirth books, doing all the research on VBAC with me.He was just really supportive. That's something I would say is very important for a VBAC mom is to have a support person who's not just present, but truly supportive of you and knows what you're going to need and does the work with you ahead of time so that you can just focus on laboring and they can be there to make sure you have water, and you're fed if you're hungry, so I was really blessed to have him and to have his full support.Meagan: Absolutely.My husband told me, he said, "I just don't understand." He just didn't understand. I get that he didn't understand, but I love hearing this where we're learning together. I want to say to couples or to partners, even if you don't understand, understand and trust that it's important to your partner and be there for them because, like you were saying, it can make such a big impact in the way you feel, the way you view your birth, and your overall experience.Julia: Right. No, and that's so true because I feel like, most people's support person is their husband, and a lot of men feel like maybe they can't really help as much or just say, "Well, the doctor knows what to do. I'm just here, like, for emotional support."But it's so much more than that. My husband learned ahead of time how to do counter pressure, and I actually really didn't need it. I think he had done it once, but what really helped me the most was just leaning on him. I did that most of the time. Just leaning into him, and letting him support my weight. He also did a really great job of reminding me to just focus on my breathing techniques and just relaxing between the surges.All of those natural pain relief remedies were really, really helpful. I bought a TENS machine and a heating pad, but I ended up not needing any of those.Meagan: But you at least were prepared with them.Julia: I was. Yeah, I was definitely prepared. We also had hung up all my birth affirmations. We had done a lot of meditation and visualization exercises throughout pregnancy, and so I used some of those as well. He was really great at reminding me just saying, "I love you. You're doing it. You're doing a great job." That was very helpful just feeling him there.Meagan: Yeah, absolutely.So with postpartum, this is also another common question. Is it better postpartum from my Cesarean versus my VBAC? What would you say? And any tips that you have for healing through your VBAC?Julia: Yeah, so my postpartum experience this time around is so much better. It's a night and day difference, not just physically healing like that. My VBAC is nothing compared to the C section. I think a lot of people fail to realize that a C-section is major, major abdominal surgery. Anyone else who had major abdominal surgery would be sent home to be on bed rest for weeks and you have to care for a newborn on top of that. With my C-section, I was a first-time mom. It was so overwhelming. Everything was new to me. I had a lot of pain with breastfeeding at first. I attribute a lot of that to the nurses making me pump. I was never sized for flanges. I just used the ones that came with the Medella and they weren't sized to me.I think that caused a lot of nipple damage. I ended up getting mastitis at two weeks postpartum the first time around and had to go back into the hospital for that and just had so much pain with latching that I ended up exclusively pumping for my son. I'm really proud because I was able to do that for two years, so he had breastmilk for two years.Meagan: That is a commitment.Julia: Yes, it was such a commitment. But I'm really, really happy that I did it and it was worth it to me. I just didn't want that negative experience of the birth and all that damage that happened early on from the pump to affect this because I really knew I wanted to breastfeed, and I was able to do it with exclusive pumping.And then this time around, it was just so much better. Breastfeeding is going great, and I've seen some research on that too. When you have a positive birth experience, that can also affect breastfeeding and even the first latch and everything.Just your emotions surrounding postpartum, when you go through something like that and you feel supported and in charge of your birth, you go into motherhood feeling the same way.Meagan: Yeah.Julia: I can't explain how much better it is this time around. That's why I really encourage all moms to know that you can do your own research and especially VBAC moms, there's so much out there about uterine rupture, and when you look at the relative risk versus the absolute risk, these are the kinds of things that you may not know to do because your doctor is just going to present the statistics one way. But we know that the way that those statistics are presented really greatly impacts what decision you make. And it's important to understand that.And so I would say my biggest tip for VBAC moms is to just really do your own research and find a provider who you feel like in your gut is going to be there for you, and is going to really believe in you. Meagan: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what I was looking for with my crazy interview process was someone who I didn't just think would be there to be there, but be there to support me and really root for me and really be on my team, not just be there. I just think it makes such a big, big difference. And kind of going away from provider but coming into due dates and waiting longer. When I say longer, past the traditional 39 to 41 weeks. Now you were mentioning, people were even saying at 38 weeks, "Hey, have you had your baby? When are you gonna have your baby?" Oh my gosh. And these people, most of the time, I would say 99% of the time, they really just are excited for you to have your baby. And so if you're listening and maybe you have this situation, do say things like, "Hey, oh my gosh, I'm just so excited for you," not like, "When are you going toa have this baby?" Because it does start taking a toll sometimes on mom's mental health at the end.I wanted to also talk a little bit about due dates because Evidence Based Birth-- Rebecca Dekker, she's incredible. If you guys don't know them yet, go check out Evidence Based Birth. They've got a lot of really great blogs. But there is just a little part of a large blog that I wanted to read about and her little bullet point says, "Is the traditional due date really your due date?" I think this just fits so well here because you were 42 weeks and which day again?Julia: 42 weeks and 5 days.Meagan: 5 days, that's what I was thinking. So 42 weeks and 5 days. So obviously your traditional due date that you were given weeks before wasn't really true. Right? So it says, "Based on the best evidence, there is no such thing as an exact due date, and the estimated due date of 40 weeks is not accurate. Instead, it would be more appropriate to say that there is a normal range of time in which most people give birth. About half of all pregnant people will go into labor on their own by 40 weeks and 5 days for first-time mothers or 40 weeks and 3 days for mothers who have given birth before. The other half will not." Then it says, "Are there some things that can make your pregnancy longer? By far, the most important predictor of a longer pregnancy is family history of long pregnancies, including your own personal history, your mother, your sisters, etc. and the history of the baby's biological father's family history as well." In 2013, there was a large study that was looked at with more than 475,000 Swedish births, most of which were dated with an ultrasound before 20 weeks in that they found that genetics had an increasingly strong influence on your chance of giving birth after 42 weeks. Okay, there's so much more you guys. It talks about if you've had a post-term birth before, you have a 4.4 times more likely chance of having another post-term, if I can read, with the same partner. If you've had post-term birth before, then you switch partners, you have 3.4 times the chance of having another post- term birth with your new partner. And if your sister had a post-term birth, you have a 1.8 times the chance of having a post-term birth. You guys, it goes on and on and on. This is such a great article and eye opening in my opinion. I'm going to attach it in the show notes and it does continue to go on for risk for mothers, risk for infants.What about stillbirth? We know that is a huge topic when it comes to going past your due date just like uterine rupture is a huge topic for VBAC. I feel like when due dates come in, it's stillbirth. And she actually says that. It says up until the 1980s, some research thought that the risk of stillbirth past 41 to 42 weeks was similar to the risk of stillbirth earlier. She's going to go back and talk with how it definitely is a different measurement here, but the stats are there. The evidence is there. But look at you. You went. You trusted your body. You went with your body. You did what you needed to do to take extra precautions and had a beautiful, beautiful experience.Julia: Yeah, I'm really happy that I did trust my intuition and I did the research. All those things that you were talking about like risk of stillbirth and everything that you hear, there's a common thing that goes around social media like, "Oh, nothing good happens past 40 weeks." But that's just not the case.If you look at other countries that are like very similar in economic status to us in the US, due dates are calculated differently everywhere, so who's to say that this mythical 40-week due date is the end all be all? A lot of other countries won't even induce prior to 42 weeks unless there's like an issue. In the US, we see so many people routinely getting induced at 39 weeks, so I just think's it's really a cultural thing, so we we come to believe that it's the safest thing.But when you step back and do your own research, you can get a full picture and you can see, why are we inducing without any, any contraindication? Like why are people being presented Cesarean section as if it's just a minor procedure?I feel like in the Business of Being Born documentary, if you haven't seen it, I would highly recommend everybody watching it really, because it shows how C-sections have become so much more popular and the reasons why they think that is and just the flaws in the medical system. It was just really eye opening and really encouraged me on my VBAC journey. It gave me a lot of tips and information and led me to find other resources. VBAC Facts was another really great thing that I referenced a lot. Evidence Based Birth like you had mentioned, and then of course, listening to The VBAC Link Podcast and podcasts of moms who have really positive VBAC stories because you only hear the negative a lot of the time.With birth in general, I feel like, it's just presented as such a scary thing. I really want to encourage women to know that birth is made to be this way. It doesn't have to be some scary out of control thing where you're at the mercy of a doctor or a provider telling you when to push or telling you to do something that you don't feel comfortable doing. When we trust nature and we surrender to the power of labor, it's really sacred. It's beautiful. It's normal, and most of all, it's safe in most cases.We don't have to fight it or medicalize it. And in the words of Ricky Lake, who gave birth in her bathtub in that stellar documentary Business of Being Born, she had said, "Birth is not an illness. It's not something that needed to be numbed. It needed to be experienced." For anyone who's planning or would like to plan an unmedicated birth, you can get a lot of resistance or people who don't understand. But I really encourage you to know that you can do it, that women have been doing it for generations. And just keep those affirmations in your mind and believe in yourself. You have to do that.Meagan: Exactly. I love that you pointed that out. There are so many times that we do treat birth as this medical event, this illness, this problem, and it's just not. It's not. It's not. I don't know what else to say. It is not. And we have to change our view. And just like you were re saying, it's a cultural thing. We have to change or it's just not going to get better. It could get worse. We're seeing the Cesarean rate. We're seeing these things happen. And there's a problem. There's a problem out there. We have to start stepping back and realizing that birth is not that medical event and we can trust this process. And our bodies were meant to do this. And they do it every day. Every day, all over the world. Every single day, a baby is born, probably thousands. I don't even know the exact number. But we can do this. We don't have to, we don't have to treat it like that.Julia: Right. That's what I really liked about the midwifery model of care. It was just so different to my experience with, with my OB. I think a lot of people fail to realize that in most other parts of the world, low-risk women are attended by midwives and the obstetricians are there to take care of the percentage of women who are having issues. With home birth, you can think, oh well, what if something goes wrong and you're not in the hospital setting?But what a lot of people don't realize is that oftentimes these interventions that are routinely done in the hospital that most of the time they don't even ask for permission to do, or they present it in a way that they're helping you actually lead to some of these devastating consequences, like low-risk women going in and then ending up with a C-section for reasons that they often can't even understand.And so that's something that I really feel passionately about is just encouraging women to advocate for yourself and to know ahead of time, what is routine and why are they offering this? Is this for your benefit or for the doctor's benefit? With all these risks of these different things that can happen, like Pitocin, which is commonly used to induce or augment labor, you might not need that. Or did you know that if they started that you can ask for them to shut it off?You should be in charge of your birth. When you're in that setting, it can be intimidating and you might feel like you don't have a voice, especially when you're already in a vulnerable position in labor. So I was really confident with my midwives' ability to look out for anything that may go wrong. But I love her hands-off approach. She didn't intervene. She just stood back and was just there to witness. There was no telling me when to push. I was able to experience the fetal ejection reflex which was really cool. I just felt my body pushing for me and surrendered to that. She was there to make sure that everything was going smoothly. I was the one who picked my baby up out of the water and she just stood back while my husband and my baby and I met each other for the first time. It was just all really special. That's something I want to say. With the risk of uterine rupture that you hear about with VBAC, that wasn't even in my mind. I didn't have someone there constantly telling me, "Oh, well, we're seeing this on the monitor," or scaring me with the very, very slim chance of rupture.Meagan: Exactly. Oh, so many good tips, such a great story. I am just so grateful that you are here today sharing it with us.Julia: I'm really grateful to be here and to share my story with 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

We are so excited to be joined today by our friend, Ali Levine. You will instantly feel her bright energy as she shares her awesome VBAC story with us.A celebrity stylist and TV personality, Ali is no stranger to being in the limelight. With her first pregnancy, she had glamorous photoshoots, went to flashy events, and made a dreamy birth plan. When the natural water birth of her dreams quickly turned into a traumatic and invasive C-section, Ali was left confused, disappointed, and depressed. Ali drastically changed her approach to birth with her second pregnancy. Once she began researching VBAC, Ali was determined, intentional, and never looked back.Ali's VBAC journey is one of a life-changing, spiritual awakening that we absolutely love and know you will love too. You can also listen to Ali's HBAC story on Episode 264!Additional linksAli's Podcast: Everything with Ali Levine How to VBAC: The Ultimate Preparation Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Julie: You are listening to The VBAC Link podcast and we are so excited. We have been chitchatting with Ali today and she has a really amazing birth story to tell. We cannot wait for you to hear it. I am sitting here in my dentist's parking lot. I literally just got done getting a filling. I had to rush out so that I could be on the call to listen to Ali's story today. And so before we do that, Meagan is going to go ahead and give us a Review of the Week.Meagan: Yes, I am. Oh my gosh, you guys are in for a treat. Ali is so fun. We have just been talking to her for like, five minutes and I am just already giddy to hear her story. She has got such a fun, live personality to her. It's going to be awesome. This review is from jovannaf1 and in parentheses, it says “Germany.” So, I am wondering if she is either in Germany or her name is German.Julie: Ooh, that would be fun.Meagan: I know, right? Her title is “Love it.” This is from Apple Podcasts. It says, “Thank you so much for spreading such an important message, ladies. I am currently pregnant with my third child and your podcast has given me so much help and resources to know that VBA2C is possible. I find women's stories so inspiring. Thank you.”And we want to thank you for leaving that awesome review and thank all of you who are listening and support us along this journey. This podcast has been absolutely so much fun. We are so excited to be able to continue offering all of the stories and continue to get submissions. We get submissions all the time and it is always just so awesome to read them even if they are not all shared. We read every single one. They are all incredible. So, thank you, thank you, thank you and if you haven't already, please drop us a review. It means the world to us and we will read it on a podcast one day.Julie: Do you know what is so funny? My mom, I don't even think she knows what a podcast is still. It is so funny because sometimes when we are chatting, I will say, “You know, Mom? Look. Look at these reviews. See? I am actually helping people with what I do. I am really making a difference.” She looks at me and she smiles and she is like, “I know you are.” I am like, “No but really, Mom. Look at all my reviews!”It's just so fun. We really do love them and thank you guys for helping my mom know that I am actually helping people.Meagan: Okay, so we are going to jump into this episode because like I said, you guys are in for a treat. You're going to notice right off the bat, Ali is just such a fun person to listen to. She has had a VBAC and we just need to give her a little introduction if you would not mind, Ali. First of all, can I just tell you? Maybe you've heard this before. This is not VBAC-related. This is in regards to your Instagram page. I don't know why. So, it is Ali Levine and I always read it like “Avril Lavigne” every single time. When you started to contact us, I was like, “Avril Lavigne is contacting us?!”Julie: “He was a skater boy. She said, ‘See you later boy.'”Meagan: I was like, “Oh my gosh.” So, it is not Avril Lavigne. It is Ali Levine and, is it LaVINE or LaVEEN?Ali: No, it's LaVEEN. It is so funny because I have had this said to me several times. People will be like, “So, do you know her?” I am like, “I think she is a distant cousin.” Same with Adam. You know what I mean? It's so funny. I have actually styled Adam back in the day when I was styling different celebrities. It is just so funny when people say that to me because I crack up. So, yes, no. I am not Avril Lavigne, but I bring the same kind of flavor, I think, as she does.Meagan: You are so awesome. Yeah, it is just so funny. It is just how it reads. It just automatically goes to Avril Lavigne in my mind, but you are so awesome. We think you are awesome. And, yeah. As you were saying, you are a celebrity stylist, which, how cool is that? Motherhood, fashion, lifestyle expert, and TV personality. I mean, you are going to hear it coming out right here. You are going to see it on her Instagram page. If you haven't, go right now. It is @alilevinedesign. So, it is @alilevinedesign. Go check her out. It is super fun. I think you actually have a couple, like Everything with Ali Levine, right? Like, you have a couple of pages.Ali: Yes, that's my podcast.Meagan: That's your podcast.Ali: Everything with Ali Levine is my podcast, yes.Meagan: Yes. Ali Levine. So, go listen to her. It is just so fun. So, okay. I am just going to read your bio. Is that okay?Ali: Whatever you want.Meagan: Whatever I want, all right. So it says, “Ali Levine believes that no matter where you roam, from the laundry room to the red carpet, authenticity is your superpower and confidence is your best accessory.”I love that. The week your podcast goes on, we need to make a little word blurb and put that and put your name in that. It's amazing.Julie: I can make a shirt. I want to make a shirt.Meagan: Do it. Let's do it. “The New York-hotshot-turned-Hollywood style maven delivers a real, raw look at her own motherhood journey amid the treasures she's uncovered in the universal search for authenticity, spiritual wholeness, and happiness.”Seriously, so excited to have you. I know that you have two beautiful daughters. We are excited to hear about both of their births. So, before I take up all the time ranting and raving about how awesome you are, let's let everyone hear about how awesome you are from you and your awesome story.Ali: Aw. Well, thank you so much for having me. I was telling you before we started recording-- truly, I am so honored to be here tonight. I listen to you guys literally every day still, now. I was listening my entire pregnancy. My doula, Stacey, has given your podcast to so many different clients when she is like, “Hey, this client is struggling. What should I have them listen to?” And I am like, “Have them listen to The VBAC Link.” You guys have been such a godsend, truly. Especially during the pandemic, and everything that was going on with my birth, and plans changing every day, the only solid piece I had was with you guys. I literally had you in my ear as much as humanly possible to keep putting the intention that I was going to get my VBAC and I did with my second daughter. It was so freaking magical and healing. It makes me cry still.Meagan: Well, I love it because one of the things that I feel sometimes weird about even though it's my own podcast is, I still go back and listen to all the stories. I am not having babies anymore. I am not preparing for a VBAC, but all of these stories are just so inspiring. And honestly, they help me because I can send these to my clients. So many of these are powerful and educational for my own clients, so I am excited to hear that both you and your doula are still with us. You're still hanging out with us even though you rocked your VBAC and, yeah. We are just so excited that you are with us.Ali: Well, thank you. I agree with you completely and if there is anything I have learned from my social media and my own podcast, it is that beautiful authenticity, that sharing of that real and rawness, and being able to be vulnerable and share all of that. Not only is it so healing and beautiful for the individual, but it is so empowering for the other women listening and for the moms that are going through it. It is like, we are all there for each other and in that sense, we are all really going for our VBAC and when you get to hear these other stories-- like, during my pregnancy, I remember finding you guys randomly when I was searching for VBAC support and I was listening. I just started falling in love with the stories and I was like, “Oh my gosh. I could picture myself in that position. Oh my gosh.” And to feel like I could do it, it was such an empowering feeling. So, kudos to you guys, truly, for this show.Meagan: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. It has been so rewarding. It truly has.Ali: That's amazing.Julie: Yeah, thank you. It is fun to come full circle, where we have people who were listening to the podcast and are on the podcast. I just feel like it is really cool when you were listening to the stories, and you were getting inspired by the stories, and then you get to share your story now and inspire other people. Then, we have this domino effect where people are listening to the podcast, and then sharing their stories, and then others are listening to their stories and then sharing their stories. It is just this really cool community and platform that we have built. It just makes me really happy.Ali: No, I love it. And you can hear that with you guys. Like, truly. Every time you listen, you hear that happiness and how much you guys celebrate everyone who is on and their stories and it is like-- something that I have learned with my second daughter is, birth is truly beautiful. It is something that I honestly with my first, especially after having quite a traumatic C-section, I really was in a fear-based place. I am so grateful that I switched from that fear to that love, and that transformation, and all that because it really is. As intense as it can be, the more you can be intentional, the more you can empower yourself, no matter what the circumstance, it is transformational and it is life-changing and so many ways. Not just in, of course, the fact that you give birth, but in my opinion, you are reborn. There is a spiritual awakening, at least for myself. It has just been so magical for me to get to really, really dive into it. And so, I am excited to share it with you guys.Meagan: Well, we are excited to hear it.Ali: All right, so going back to Amelia. When I got pregnant-- we talked about the fact that I am a celebrity stylist and I do a lot with television and Hollywood and all of that. And so, when I got pregnant, I had just come off of being on a show on Bravo, so people nationally knew my pregnancy. A lot more eyeballs were watching my pregnancy than I expected them to be and watching my journey, which was really amazing and cool, but also a lot of pressure at the same time.I really didn't realize how much it played into my actual pregnancy and birth. When I was in the midst of thinking about what I wanted to have for a birth plan, I was of course very much in the mindset of like, “I really want to have a natural birth, and I want to have a tub birth, and I want it to be beautiful, and I want flowers, and I want this, and I want that.” I am a more natural person in general in how I like to do things. I like to seek out natural options before I go to something else. And so for me, it felt like it really aligned and it was what I wanted to do.I honestly didn't really do my research or homework into what that looked like. I got a midwife. I got a doula, but I didn't do research beyond that. I didn't really look into what it potentially could be. It was more just like I made sure I had my team and I made sure I had a backup doctor with that team in case things didn't go that way just to make sure I was safe, and that was it. I didn't really do much research I guess I would say.And so, once it came time for me when I went into labor-- First off, I will share that I was getting really fed up with everybody asking me when I was going to pop when I was going to have the baby. My parents were sitting and looking at me like this balloon that was going to pop and I am like, “Oh my gosh. It is okay. I am fine. They checked. The baby is fine. I am fine.” But every two seconds it was like, “Why haven't you gone into labor? How come she hasn't come yet?” I was like, “I don't know.” It was a lot of pressure, honestly. I got so fed up at around-- I think it was at 40 weeks and I said to my husband, “I can't deal anymore. If one more person asks me, I am going to lose it.” So, I took castor oil, which I don't advise.Meagan: I did that with my first birth too.Ali: Did you? Okay.Meagan: Yes, and everyone was asking me the same questions. I had one coworker who was like, “Do I need to get you a wheelbarrow to wheel you around the office?” I am like, “Shut up.”Ali: Right. Nobody wants to hear that. It is funny for a minute and then you are like, “Please, just let me be because clearly, I am uncomfortable, and I am trying to be at peace with this, and I am trying to allow my baby to come when they are supposed to come,” which, you know. It is easier said than done. And then you're sitting there and they are like, “Well, you haven't popped yet.” My mom was like, “Well, I had you and they had to induce me. Well, what if that is what you need? What is going on?” And I was like, “Oh my gosh. Let's just leave all of the pressures off of me please and let my body do its thing.” I couldn't deal.So, I took castor oil. It did definitely jumpstart something because all of a sudden, five hours later, my water broke and I was going into labor. But I went into pre-labor and pre-contractions because of the castor oil. And so, we think that now, obviously in hindsight, that it probably pushed her too fast and she wasn't ready. Because first off, it made me feel really uncomfortable. I went into my birth center to my midwife and I wasn't really dilated past even a 3, and so she sent me home and was like, “You know, go home and go to sleep. Try to do this and try to do that.” Of course, I couldn't do any of those things. I was losing it at home trying to stay calm and wait for her to come. We went back to my birth center and then I was finally progressing a little bit more. I still wasn't active, but she took me because I think she felt bad that I was struggling.And so, we go to my midwife's birth center and we are there. Hours of really hardcore, manual, full-blown natural labor, really doing the work. Squatting, on the toilet, on the ball, in the shower, in the bed, on all fours, just constant, constant, and it was a good day of full-blown movement trying to get my body to do what I needed to do, and progress, and make things happen.I finally started getting too active and she was like, “All right. Let's transition you to the tub so that we can get you ready and get you comfortable if that's where you want to be. I got in the tub and I immediately felt super sick, and super overwhelmed, and dehydrated, and also nauseous. I threw up. She was like, “All right. Let's get you out.” So, I got back on the ball. I got back on the toilet and I felt awful.So then, they lowered the water in the tub and everything. My doula was putting a washcloth on me, and essential oils, and trying to calm me. I could feel that I just felt off. We went back into the tub because I told her that I really wanted to give birth there and so she was like, “All right. Let's breathe, and take our time, and see where we are.” At that point, I was in the tub and I was almost at 30 hours of being in labor. She was like, “You know, you are only at the beginning of active labor. I think I was technically at 6-6.5, something like that. I wasn't fully progressing. She was getting concerned that things weren't really fully progressing and I was really losing my stamina and my strength because I had been pushing and moving for so long.She was like, “Let's talk about interventions.” Of course, being someone who did want natural and had a “birth plan” and all that, I wanted nothing to do with that. I was like, “No, no, no. I want to just stay here. Let me just progress. Leave it alone.” She stepped out of the room, my midwife, and made a phone call to the backup doctor at the hospital to let him know what she was thinking. I guess, of course, they advised each other that I should go in. And so, they got me out of the tub. That was a whole scene in itself. That could have been on a freaking reality show. It was like, getting me out, my parents are in the waiting room. We asked them not to be there, and they're pacing, and they're flipping, and everything is a mess. Everyone is flipping out. “Am I okay? What is happening?” It was just so much pressure.I get into my husband's truck. I am fine. I am in active labor, but I am totally fine. Baby is safe and I am fine. We drive over to the hospital. I get there and they check me in and I get to my room. They checked me and they were like, “All right. You progressed a little bit more, but she is stuck in the birth canal at this point. So we are going to give you some Pitocin to ramp things up and try to move her.” They put me on-- I think it was 15, I think, is the highest you can be? I didn't go from a small amount. It was like literally, they cranked me up and I went from full-blown natural-- it was awful. I went from full-blown natural at the birth center in the dark with my music, with my oils, all of that to bright lights, fluorescent, hospital, screaming, panic, everybody in your shit if you will. It was just crazy and then it was like oh, and then this Pitocin that was cranked to no end. I couldn't handle it. I immediately was like, “Oh my gosh. I can't breathe. I feel uncomfortable.” I'm like, crying. I was really struggling. So then they were like, “All right. Well, let's give her an epidural.” They cranked that all the way up. I went from feeling like I couldn't handle it to I couldn't feel anything and then I felt super sick.I threw up again. I just felt awful. I just remember in that moment feeling so down and feeling like I failed at what I was trying to do. I remember even now, that heavy moment of, “What just happened? Why am I here? What is all of this? This is nothing of what I wanted. I was so overwhelmed.” And so fast forward, I got to 40 hours. We spent 10 more hours at the hospital. We got to 40 hours. My doctor came in and was like, “All right. Well, at least you have progressed now to basically complete. We are going to give this a go and have you really push and make this happen.” I am like, “Okay.” And so I am pushing, but I really couldn't feel it to be honest. The epidural, they said, was supposed to wear off, but it was like I really could not-- I just could not feel it.They were like, “Push. Push. Push.” I am pushing. I am pushing. They are like, “Push harder.” I am pushing as much as I could. She comes down. I obviously, really couldn't see her, but everybody else could and they were like, “But then she shot back up in the back birth canal,” which I obviously didn't even know was a thing. And so, she shot down, and then she shot back up. Then they were like, “All right. We are going to go again.” She shot down again. He went to grab her and she shot back up. I just remember my doctor looking at me and being like, “Okay. We are going to take a break and then I will be back.”He went and actually said to me, “I am going to go get dinner and then come back.” At first, I was like, “Oh, that is so rude,” but my doula and midwife advised me because they were still there with me. They advised me that the reason he did that was to buy me more time because if he wasn't present technically there shouldn't have had me had a baby without him unless it was an emergency.So they were like, “He is buying you time.” So I was like, “Okay.” I didn't realize at that time that there were a lot of decisions that needed to be made. What are we going to do? What are we going to keep trying? Are we going to do something else? C-section hadn't even been in my mind because I hadn't even been talked to about a C-section, prepped around a C-section, like nothing. So I was not thinking that at all. I was just thinking, “We are just going to wait longer. I am going to rest and we are going to go again.” Everybody leaves the room. My husband sits with me and he turns to me. We were at almost 42 hours at this point. He looks at me and he goes, “Don't you want to meet her now?” I started bawling. I am like, “Are you kidding me? Like, are you kidding me? Of course, I want to meet her now, but I have done so much work. I want things to go the way I want them to go. They weren't already going the way I wanted them to go when we were at the birth center.”He's like, “I know, but you are so tired. You have been such a warrior. Don't you just want to meet her and let yourself rest? We will have her.” Of course, I burst into tears and I was just like, “Fine, I guess.” I just let go. I remember being so upset and feeling so defeated in that moment because I got to those 42 hours and I had gotten to basically complete. So much had played out and I was convinced that “Okay. At least I was going to have her vaginally in a hospital.” And then it was just like, “Nope.” I get rolled Into the OR and have my C-section. Thank God, it was so fast. It was probably not even 10 minutes. They were really, really quick and she was right there. I have to say that they did an amazing job and I was so grateful. But it was just so not obviously what I envisioned or imagined. I just remember after getting back in the room and the initial shock and then putting me with her and everything, I just remember feeling like, “Oh my god, I am so happy to have her in my arms,” but I just felt like I had failed and my body had failed.It was such a debilitating feeling. I felt so numb in me, even though I was so blissfully happy about her. It was like a wild rollercoaster of emotions, you know? Because I was so happy to have her and so excited to finally hold my baby, but at the same time, I was almost dead inside. Like, what happened? Why did things play out like that? What is that? Do you know?For those that have followed my story, you know shortly after having my first daughter, I had pretty heavy postpartum depression. I do believe a lot of my birth played into that. When I got pregnant again with Arley, I really made the intention of, “I really don't want to go through that again if I don't have to. I really want to be smart about doing my research this time around my birth. What can I do to prepare my body? How can I be more intentional internally and not externally?” Because I felt like with Amelia-- again, I was a new mom. I had no idea what I was getting into, so to me, it was like, “Oh, you just give birth. No big deal. Everybody does it.” I didn't prep my body. I didn't do anything. The only thing I did was take maternity photoshoots that were glamorous. I just did all of the checkboxes of the things in the external world and all the glam. With Arley, I was like, “No.” I am going to be so intentional about what I am going to do, what I need to do, and do my research and talk to my birth communities around me now that I know them from sharing my experience and everything with Amelia.Luckily, I had so many incredible people around me who advised me to get a chiropractor right when I got pregnant to get my body aligned. So I found a chiropractor who specialized in VBACs and aligned with her right at three weeks when I was pregnant. I stayed with her my entire pregnancy. I found people who could do labor stimulation massage for later in the game and a doula that had also been a part of VBACs. Just all of these different entities that I didn't realize were so important. And then most importantly, when I got pregnant with Arley, I went to my regular prenatal doctor, and the first thing she says to me after “Congratulations” is, “Okay, now let's schedule your C-section.” I looked at her and I said, “Whoa. First off, I am just swallowing the fact that I am pregnant again. Secondly, I don't want to do a C-section.” She was like, “Well since you already had one, I am advising you to have one.”I was like, “Well, with all due respect, I know that I can have a VBAC.” She was like, “Well, I really don't advise it. I really think you should have a C-section.”Julie: Wow.Ali: Isn't that wild? That was my reaction. Julie: Like, right off the bat, even. Not even discussing anything.Ali: Nope. No discussion. It was like, “I know better. Here is this information.” Gave me a folder, the whole nine yards of my risks, the whole thing, the whole fear-mongering. Thank God I had so many people around me in the birth community from Amelia that they had all told me that just wasn't true and that the success rate was way higher than people realize and discuss. It was funny because I actually learned about VBACs when I was on Berlin's podcast. I'm spacing on his name. Dr. Berlin.Meagan: Elliot? Elliot Berlin?Ali: Yes, thank you. Yes. And so, I was on his podcast and he wanted to share my birth story with Amelia. After I was on it, he turned to me and he goes, “You know, you could still have another baby vaginally.” I was like, “No, I can't.” He was like, “Yeah, you can.” I was like, “What do you mean?” He was like, “It's called a VBAC. They happen all the time.” He was like, “It has nothing to do with the way--” and this and that. It was like this reality of what had been told to me and preached to me all of a sudden just burst in front of me. It was like, “Wait. Unlearn everything you were just told and pay attention. Zoom in to what you're being told now and learn.” And so, I did. Once I got pregnant with Arley, I knew I wanted to at least attempt a VBAC and get myself aligned body-wise, intentionally, mind-wise, soul, everything to do that. Once that doctor said that to me, I was like, “Well, I am sorry but I am not going to stay with you because you are not for me if you are not going to at least try to let me have a VBAC.” And so, I parted ways with her. I was so grateful she showed me her true colors right from the beginning because I know some doctors can bait and switch from what I have heard. She let me know right from the beginning and so then I started reaching out to different doulas and people to give me references. I landed on Dr. Brock who is in Los Angeles who is literally known as “The VBAC King”. You guys will appreciate that.That's literally what people call him. “The VBAC King”.Julie: I want to know more about The VBAC King, but it's okay.Ali: Totally fine. It's all good. So actually, it is funny that you guys bring up Elliot because Elliot and he have actually worked together in several births. Because a lot of people in LA go to him, if a baby is breech, they go to Dr. Brock because he is the only doctor known in Los Angeles to turn a breech baby. He is amazing. And so, I went to him. I asked for a referral to go see him because he is really hard to get into. I sit with him and I am twiddling my thumbs when he comes in. I am pregnant and he is like, “What is going on with you? Why are you so nervous?” I remember looking at him and I said quietly to him, “I want to discuss a VBAC.” He is like, “What?” “I want to discuss having a VBAC.” And he is like, “What is there to discuss?” He was like, “I did three this morning. What is the problem?”Meagan: Oh my gosh! Yeah.Julie: Best feeling ever.Ali: It was the best feeling ever. I looked at him and I was like, “Oh my gosh, that's it?” Because I felt so shamed and wronged with that other doctor. And so, when he was so open to me and he was just like, “Yeah.” The nurse was so funny that was in there. She was taking my stats and she was like, “He does them literally every day and sometimes three times. It is not a big deal.” I was like, “Oh my gosh.”He was like, “Yeah. We will just monitor you. We are going to check your scar and make sure everything is together. As long as everything looks good, we will plan to do it, and if things down the road change, we will have a conversation.” He was like, “But I don't see why not. You look like a great VBAC candidate.” He was all for it day one. I was so grateful that he was so supportive and his team and everything. And so fast forward, he checked my scars several times and everything looked good, thank God. Baby was growing great and everything was happening. We get to when the pandemic hits. The world changes. I went from, “Okay, you can't have your doula” to “Now, you can't have your husband at the hospital.” It was becoming really intense for me because here I am, I really want to go for my VBAC and I want to have my support system, and now I'm not going to even have anybody. How is this going to work? Am I going to be able to have my VBAC? I am not going to lie, I was in a lot of fight-or-flight mode. I started researching home birth and HBACs at home. I started really doing research and talking to midwives and other people who were home doctors in case my husband couldn't be with me. Because to me, it was one thing not to have Stacey, my doula, but it was another not to have my husband. I just felt like he had been through so much with me through Amelia that I couldn't imagine not having him with Arley. Thank God, I think Arley knew. She held on because she literally came right at 42 weeks and they had just opened the hospitals back up a week before. And so, my husband was allowed to come and be with me. I really felt like she held out for him. But it was funny the week before, actually a week and a half probably before, Dr. Brock, as great as he was, he is still a doctor. Near the end, especially with the pandemic and everything, he was just like, “Well, you know, you're getting close and you still haven't gone into labor. Maybe we should just induce.”I was like, “No. I don't want to. I really want to give my body a shot.” He kept pushing me. He was like, “Well, let's do a sweep. Let's do this. Let's do that.” I finally got a sweep a week before. Nothing happened. It was just painful for me. He was like, “All right.” We did another sweep a few days later and nothing was happening. He was like, “Let me just induce you. Let me just--” and I was like, “Dr. Brock. With all due respect, you have been so supportive of me through this whole experience. Please, just let me get to the final mark, and if things don't happen then, then fine. We will do it.” I think it was maybe four or five days before and he kind of, not went back on his word, but I think he had moments because all of this was going on with the pandemic. He was just like, “Look.” He was like, “I am going to schedule the induction. It is going to be tomorrow,” and this and that. I remember leaving there and I felt really powerless. I was really upset and I came home. It was my eight-year anniversary with my husband. I turned to him and I was like, “I don't want to do it. I don't want to go in tomorrow.” He was like, “All right. Let's talk through it.”He is very logical and he was like, “Let's talk through it. What's going on? Why don't you want to?” I just told him, I was like, “It just doesn't feel right. I have worked so hard to be so intentional around this birth from my chiropractor to finding a supportive doctor, to the right doula, to even different workouts, meditation, The VBAC Link podcast, just all kinds of things that I really surrounded myself with material-wise and tool-wise.” So I was like, “It just doesn't feel right. It doesn't align.”He was like, “All right. Well, if you feel that way, then don't go.” I called my doula and she was like, “Look. At the end of the day, you would be your own advocate. Everything is good with you and the baby. They run tests. Everything is cool. So at this point, it is really just a waiting game. So if you really don't want to, then you voice that. You call and you cancel and you cancel the induction.” I remember calling Cedars-Sinai and canceling. I called and they were like, “Oh, we don't even have your name on the list.” I was like, “Oh.” They were like, “But we will let Dr. Brock know.” It was funny because it was such a build-up to call. I felt like I was being a bad kid in school. So I was so nervous to call and cancel. I was dancing in my room for hours to call. I finally called and they were like, “Oh, you're not even on the schedule.” I was like, “Oh, okay. Well, just let them know I am not coming.”The next day, I got a call from my doctor and Dr. Brock is like, “Come in. I want to do a nonstress test on you.” So I go in, everything is cool. He was like, “All right, so you pushed against me.” He was like, “Message received. You're not doing it.” I am like, “No. I am not.” And he is like, “All right.” He is like, “It is fine.” He is like, “Everything is good. Tests are good. I just thought you'd want to have her birthday. Don't you want to have her already?” I am like, “I do want her here, but I want her here on her terms. If there is anything I learned from my first birth, it's not about me. I don't want to do it on my terms.” He was like, “Okay, fine. It is fair.” So then he was like, “If you don't go--” because now, I was at the end of 41 weeks and 8 days or whatever. You know, when you get close to 42. He was like, “This weekend if you don't go, on Monday, we are going to schedule the induction.” I was like, “Fine. That is fair.”So that weekend came and it was Friday. I wasn't getting any kinds of signs of going into labor. I was getting a lot of that prodromal labor that you guys always talk about which is the start-and-go, and you actually contract, and you think you're in labor, but then it stalls out. That was happening for weeks to me. I was like, “What is this?” It kept happening and happening. That happened again on Friday and it just like-- nothing. My doula sent me to get acupuncture. I did that to stimulate things. That actually, I think, really helped. I did that Friday and I did that on Saturday. I went back-to-back and it really stimulated things and moved things around, I think, from what I could feel. My husband was also doing acupressure with my points at home that she had shown me.At this point, my doula had said to me, “Okay. In my opinion, I feel like there is something more to this than your body.” It reminded me of one episode, well, many episodes I listened to with you guys, but there was one specifically where you guys really hone in on fear releasing. She was like, “I really feel like there's something going on with you and we need to work through it.” So we did a recording of my birth story of Amelia‘s birth with her, just her and I recording everything, getting it out. She was like, “Okay. Now it is out. Let's process it. Let's release it. Wrap it up in a pretty bow and that's it. We are going to move past it.” I was like, “Okay.” We did that on Friday. And then, we did some more rebozo and this and that. We met up outside at a park and everything and talked things through. Saturday came and she was like, “All right. I know you are getting close and you are getting concerned.” She was like, “What else can we do to help you release this?” I was like, “I don't know. I am just so afraid of a C-section. I am so afraid of this. I am so afraid of that.” She was like, “All right.” She goes, “When you get home, you are going to write down--” And I remember learning this from you guys. She said, “You are going to write down what you told me you listened to on The VBAC Link, which was to write down your fears and release them.” She was like, “I want you to do that because I feel like there is more to this.” And so, I went back and listened to a bunch of your guys' episodes and I wrote down on pieces of paper all of the different things I was afraid of. Getting an induction, stalling out, getting a C-section, getting stuck in the birth canal, all of the things. Being on Pitocin, getting an epidural, all of the things I was truly afraid of and I burned each and every one of them. There was such a relief when I burned them. I felt it in my energy and in my body. I started crying. I just felt so good.So then, my husband and I took a walk with our toddler, Amelia. We went around the block and we were just talking and he started talking me through stuff. He was like, “What do you think it is?” I was like, “I don't know. I think I'm just afraid to wind up in another crazy, traumatic birth.” He was like, “Okay. And if God forbid, that happened, what is the worst thing? We come home. You heal. We have our second daughter. It is the four of us as a family. The overall things are fine and we have our girl.” This and that, you know, putting things into perspective for me. I was like, “Yeah, no. You are right.” He is a golfer, a really good golfer. And so, he was walking me through all the strategies for a big tournament and comparing it to getting ready for a birth of the mentality and this and that, but actually, it was really helpful for me. So we come home and we have dinner and he was like, “Let's hang out, and just stay up late, and have a good time.” So we have a little dance party with Amelia. We are playing music videos and just having a good time, dancing and laughing. And then, I go to lay down in bed. I turned on my essential oils and I do a little more acupressure. I say a little prayer. I got in bed and I put meditation in my ears and get the room really dark. I am meditating. I am like, “I am going to go into labor. Things are going to happen. Things are going to happen.” I wake up a couple of times in the middle of the night, nothing is happening. I am getting a little crushed. But I am like, “No. I am going to let it go. Let it go.”I started getting hungry and I was like, “I'm going to go downstairs for a snack.” It was probably around 1:30, maybe 2:00. I start walking down my stairs and I feel this cramp and I am like, “Ooh,” and then I feel it again. I am like, “Ooh.” I get down and I am like, “Ooh, ooh, ooh,” and I can't. I get down on my knees and I can't get up.Julie: I love that.Ali: I am like, “Oh, maybe I'm not going to have a snack.” And so, I crawled up my stairs and I'm like, “Oh, okay. Could this be?” I honestly didn't believe it because I had had so much prodromal labor. I had had so much start-and-go that it was like, “Oh, here we go again.” So I am just like, “Okay. I am just going to go lay back down.” I am crawling, but as I am crawling, it is getting more and more intense. More tightening and I am barely able to crawl. And so, I get up my stairs. I get in my room. My husband is sleeping and snoring. I am like, “Okay. I'm not going to wake him because I have told him so many times that this could be it and nothing is happening.” So I am like, “I am just going to chill.”So I call my doula. I could barely get the words out because I am in quite a bit of squeezing pain, feeling the surges, and she was like, “All right. Do me a favor. Draw your bathtub. Get in the tub. Put in a little bit of your oils and call me back. Let me just hear your breathing.” So I turned the tub on and I had this overwhelming feeling while I was sitting there in my room, just talking to myself of going into Amelia‘s room. I didn't know why. So I crawled into her room and I opened the door and crawl in. She is asleep. I crawl into her chair. I'm sitting there and I start bursting into tears. I am hysterical out of nowhere and I just start babbling and I am like, “I love you. I hope I can be a good mom when I am a mom of two. I have made such an amazing relationship between the two of us so far. I don't want to fail you.” I am just pouring my heart out. She is passed out. I am just crying and crying, just sharing my heart with her and my fear of being a mom of two. I don't want to let her down.And then I remember I said to her, “Okay. I think your baby sister is coming. So the next time I see you, she is going to be here.” I was hysterical. Then I crawl back out, crawled into my tub. I think this was maybe 2:30 or 3:00 at this point. I get in my tub and I call my doula. I start breathing and she was like, “All right. Let's do some meditation.” I had also done some HypnoBirthing between learning for Amelia's birth and then for Arley's birth. So I am doing HypnoBirthing in the tub. She is guiding me. My contractions were 11 minutes apart, so they weren't that close. So she was like, “Okay. We are just going to let you stay in the tub. Meditate. Stay in your zone. Let's see what happens.”Shortly after, not even an hour, she was like, “Okay. You are eight minutes. You're seven. Oh, okay.” She was like, “Okay, Ali. You need to wake Justin up. You are getting to be close to six minutes apart. You have got to get ready to go.” I was like, “Wait, what?” You know, because I was so in the zone at that point. I wasn't even listening to her count. I was so in my zone in the tub, in the darkness, meditating, really bringing the affirmations of having my VBAC and talking to Arley. I was just so in it, more so than I think I even realized I was. And so she was like, “You need to get out. You need to get up. You need to get to the hospital.” Justin, of course, doesn't know. My husband doesn't hear me. He is sleeping and snoring. I am screaming from the bathtub and he doesn't hear me. I'm like, “Babe. Babe! I am in labor. We have to go to the hospital.” He doesn't hear me, so my doula calls him and wakes him up. He is like, “What is going on?” She is like, “Ali is in labor. You have got to get ready to go.” He goes into the bathroom and of course, he is making fun of me as he usually does and his sarcasm. He is like, “Oh, I hear a ghost or something.” I am like, “Oh my god.” He literally is like, “Oooh. Ooooh. What is that noise? Ooooh.” I am like, “Ha, ha. That is so you.” I am like, “Come over here and squeeze my hands. I am losing my shit.” That is his personality, by the way. He gets me out. We are getting everything ready to go and getting everything in the truck to leave. My doula ended up coming down to make sure I was okay, but also because my friend was supposed to be here for Amelia had I gone into labor in the middle of the night, but wasn't picking up her phone because they probably just thought, “Oh, I am going to hear my phone go off.” And so, my doula came rushing out so that we could leave so that somebody could watch her since we couldn't bring her, especially with COVID and everything.She comes and she sees me off. I get in the truck and I am in full-blown active labor. I am transitioning. I am shaking. I'm convulsing. I am screaming. I'm trying to stay zen. I am screaming while I am meditating. This whole thing in his truck. We arrive there. I am screaming when we get out of his truck. They pull up. They bring the wheelchair. I won't forget. They put me in a wheelchair and they were shoving this mask in my face. I am screaming through the mask. I am trying to rip the mask off because I'm screaming. It was a whole thing.I get into the room. They get me in and my doula was immediately on my FaceTime. Stacey was like, “Okay.” Thank God for her. She was like, “Turn the lights down. Let's get it to be zen for her again. Get her out of the bright lights. Let's calm things down. Justin put out her crystals. Let's get her intention cards up. Get the little lights up.” Stacey is orchestrating everything from FaceTime. Justin is getting everything together and I am sitting there and breathing through. I am still natural at this point. I am just breathing through my contractions as much as I can and screaming at all of that. They checked me and I am 6.5. They're like, “All right. Well, you're definitely active and ready to go. You are progressing, so we are going to let you progress.” I think I got to almost a 7, or out of 7, and I really was having a hard time. I was really having a hard time breathing. It was getting really intense. Stacey was like, “Look. If you want to get an epidural, just get the epidural.”But, I had so much fear around getting an epidural because of Amelia‘s birth. I was like, “I don't want to. I am too afraid. I don't want to get stuck. Let me just keep going.” But I wasn't fully progressing because I was struggling. I was like, “Okay. I'm going to get an epidural.” Luckily at Cedars-- I know some hospitals don't have this, but Cedars does. I had been advised by a couple of other doulas to get a walking epidural if I could, even though I wouldn't be walking anywhere, obviously, because of the world, but I could walk in my room. And so, I got a walking epidural and for me, that was just enough to take the edge off, but not enough to numb where I could walk around and I could be on the ball. I could do hip exercises on the side of the bed. I could get on all fours. I could keep switching positions. Even when I was in the bed, I had a peanut ball being switched between my legs. I was moving constantly. I was never still. I think that was a really big game changer and helpful for me when it came to progressing because shortly after, I was at complete.We arrived at the hospital around 6:00 a.m. and by noon, I was complete. It was pretty fast for me compared to Amelia. It was like, “Oh, wow. This is happening. I have got to complete.” The doctor comes in. Dr. Brock is like, “All right. You are complete, but you are not--” I forget the stations when you are at the last station, but you're not fully there where the baby can come out. What is that called?Julie: Yeah, like +2 or +3 station.Meagan: Yeah, or even +4.Ali: Yes. Yeah, whatever it was, like the lowest one. I was almost there, but I wasn't there yet. He had said that. I was like, “Oh, okay.” He was like, “But don't worry. We are going to figure out getting her down. Let's get you to move more. Let's do some more pushing. Let's do this.” You know, I didn't realize that because of Amelia‘s birth, even though the labor was so intense with her, my body remembered that, which is wild. The muscle memory of that.I hadn't really fully pushed with Amelia, so it was pushing like a new mom, which I didn't expect to go through. I pushed for 2.5 hours after we had been told I was ready to go and was complete. I was really working, working. I had the squat bar. I was pushing. I was on the ground. I was on all fours. I was doing everything possible to move her, and keep going, and move her down and everything.She was just right there, but just wasn't happening and then I spiked a fever. Dr. Brock came in and he was like, “Okay. I was all for everything you were doing, but now you spiked a fever. I am concerned for you and the baby. I am sure everything is fine, but I don't want to take any chances, so these are the last pushes and then we are going to have to figure something out because I am not going to let you go longer because of the fever.” Of course, they had given me medication at this point to bring the fever down.And so, he had turned to me and he was like, “All right. We are going to do a vacuum to try and help you get her out. Once I get the vacuum, you are going to have to push with all your might. It is just going to be to assist and then you're going to have to push her out.” He was like, “When I tell you to push, I mean you'd better push with every single thing in you and push until you can't breathe.” I was like “Oh, okay.” I remember being in the bed, and looking at Justin, and even reflecting on it myself, and being like, “Oh my gosh. I cannot believe I got this far and here we are again. I am freaking going to have a C-section.” I was really starting to go into fight-or-flight. I was getting really, really upset. My doula was trying to calm me over FaceTime. She was like, “It's okay. We are still in control. It's okay. Breathe. Just allow things to play,” and I am in total panic at this point. I looked at Justin and I said, “Can I have my earbuds please?” I put them in my ear. I turned on one of my fear-releasing meditations. I shut my eyes. I remember praying really, really hard and just being really intentional. Like, “I can make this happen. This is going to happen. I can do this. Come on, Ali. You can do this.”Before I knew it, it was like, “Push.” I pushed so hard and the next thing I knew, there she was on my chest, screaming. I was hysterically crying. I couldn't even believe that she was there. I honestly didn't even feel her fully come out because everything was happening. It was so wild. I remember them putting her on my chest and I was bawling because I was like, “Oh my god, I did it. Oh my god. Oh my god. She's here. Oh my god.” It was the most surreal experience and so healing in that moment for me of just being like, “Holy crap. I did it. My body did it.” Even now, I get choked up because I still can't believe it happened.Meagan: I'm sure in that whole moment there was just such that rush.Julie: Yeah, wild.Meagan: Yeah, okay. I have to do this right now. And then, boom. You did it.Julie: Yeah. It sounds like she came so fast when it was time.Ali: Yeah, well once he put the vacuum on and was like, “Okay, push.” He gave me that bar--Meagan: The assistance, yes.Ali: Yeah, the assistance and gave me that bar and was like, “Push down.” I just remember I pushed with everything in me. I pushed and holy crap. She was here. She was 9 pounds, 3 ounces, by the way.Meagan: Yeah, girl!Ali: Amelia was 8 pounds, 7 ounces and I thought that was big. Arley was 23.5 inches long so it was like, oh my gosh. I couldn't believe that I got her out. It was truly amazing to me. It was so empowering. It was like, “Holy crap. My body did it.” It was so amazing. After having her on my chest and holding her, I was just bawling. I just couldn't even believe it happened.Meagan: Yeah. I'm sure it was just such an amazing moment. It sounds like she just needed to come into that pubic bone and then she was there. Oh, well congratulations.Ali: Thank you.Meagan: So awesome.Ali: It was so magical. It really was. I just felt so much support around me through my whole pregnancy. It's funny you say the pubic bone too because my chiropractor-- she kept adjusting me. Even the day before I went into labor, she adjusted me. She kept adjusting me and adjusting my hips and doing this, and my sciatica and everything to make sure I was as aligned as possible. But I think in a way it was kind of like me being tested, like how bad do you want this thing? Because when you guys were saying “the rush”, I felt like I could have either gone into fight-or-flight and I could have been like, “Oh my gosh,” in panic and allowed myself to not have that release that you guys talk about all the time, but I think because I did release, and I did allow her to come, and I got really intentional and listened to the fear releasing in my ears, I think it was all divine. And there she was.Julie: Yeah. It's incredible what can happen when you have that release of emotions. Fear in the birth space is real and it can really hold you up if you let it.Ali: Mhmm, yeah. You're right.Meagan: So awesome. Now, she is just crawling around and being such a big girl.Julie: Oh, such a fun age.Ali: It is wild how fast. I feel like I just had her and I am like, “Oh my gosh, she is already crawling everywhere.” I literally turn around and she is down the hallway and I am like, “Oh, hey girlfriend.” It is crazy.Julie: Wow.Ali: You know, but in a wild way, this whole thing with the pandemic and 2020, for me, is such a blessing because it has been such a healing time for me between my VBAC, and having the family time, and having my husband home to be there with me with my girls, and truly not experience postpartum depression. I am just so grateful for it.Julie: That's awesome. That is really cool. We are living in a really crazy world right now and whenever we hear incredible birth stories coming out of this pandemic, it warms my heart. I don't know. I could go off on five or six different tangents right now, but Meagan, what should we talk about? What should we talk about for an educational piece?Meagan: Well, I love that she talked about fear releasing and self-advocacy. One of the things that I love that your doula did-- so birth workers, listen up if you are listening. They sat and they recorded. I love that she was like, “We are going to wrap it up, and seal it with a bow, and send it off.” That is so cool. It is such a powerful way, just talking about it, and getting it out there, and hearing yourself say it, and then maybe even watching it, and then saying, “Okay. That is how I felt and this is how I feel. This is why I am moving on from this fear because of this.” And then of course moving on and doing the other activities. It is so powerful.I know I probably have talked about this until I'm blue in the face, but it really came down for me-- like, I had worked through so much and there was still stuff that I found in the very moment of labor that I didn't realize that I had worked through. It's just so, I don't know. It is just so crazy how you think you have worked through it, and then it comes up, and you are like, “Oh, wait. That didn't come up during my pregnancy,” and you have to work through it again. But if you have practiced and worked really, really hard processing during your pregnancy, then it won't be so foreign. That's the word that is coming to my mind and maybe that's the wrong word.Julie: Unfamiliar, maybe?Meagan: Yeah. It just won't be so unfamiliar and foreign in the moment to process. I know it would make processing during that time easier.Julie: Yeah. I agree, 100%. Gosh, I mean, Meagan and I have both seen the same thing with our individual doula clients and working with parents through our VBAC preparation course. I actually just had a one-on-one consult with somebody preparing for VBAC a couple of weeks ago. Most of the time when we get hung up, and when there are things holding us back, and we feel like something's not quite right, it is stemming from fear. When you can take out that fear, and write it out, and tear it up, and break it apart, and figure out where it is coming from, that is when you can really move past it in order to create a really, really clear birth space that is conducive to a nice, peaceful birth that is just happy and that you can look back on with really fond memories.Ali: Yeah. I love that. I think it is so well beautifully said and so true. You know, it is so crazy because again, when we were talking at the beginning of this podcast, with Amelia, it was obviously a normal world. I was at events and doing all of this glamorous stuff. I was doing maternity photoshoots and all of these things. And you know, fast forward to Arley and it was like, stuck at home and especially in California, very much locked down. You know, everything. It was so wild how different in that sense the world was, but yet, even in such a chaotic world, it really was such a peaceful birth. And then in such a normal world, Amelia was such a chaotic birth. So I just find that, like you were just saying, so telling when it comes to that fear and that processing of all of that and the actual intention around it. It really does, in my opinion, make such a difference. I have seen it in my own birth.Julie: Yeah. It absolutely does. Well, Ali, not Avril. It was so great to talk to you. Oh my gosh, I feel like we could just sit here and chat about everything for hours. I feel like we are friends. I just love at the end of the episode, all these podcast episodes that we do where sometimes, it's really hard to say goodbye. It's like, “No, you hang up.” “No, you hang up.” “No, you hang up.”Meagan: I know. It is so true. So true. We are like, “Wait. Can we hang out, like, tomorrow?”Ali: Right?Julie: Let's go to lunch. Where do you live again?Meagan: California.Ali: Yes, please. When we are open and normal, please do. I mean, I am so honored to be here. I truly love everything you guys are doing with your show and everything at The VBAC Link. I truly, like I said, still listen. I tell everyone to listen. I just think it is such an amazing space for women who need that kind of support. Especially women who really do want to have a VBAC and don't have those kinds of resources. I think that too many times we are told so much in birth, but especially with VBAC, “No,” and they put the fear around it from the beginning.I was so grateful that when that woman tried to really instill the fear in me that I knew better and that I was able to work past it because I feel for so many who just don't have that. That's why I was so grateful when I landed on The VBAC Link podcast because I was like, “Oh my gosh. Look at all of these amazing stories. I could be one of them too.” And like, holy crap. Here I am.Meagan: You are one of them.Julie: Full circle. I love it.Ali: Yes. Yes.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Head over to thevbaclink.com/share and submit your story. For all things VBAC, including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan's bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

What are the typical differences between hospital OB care and home birth midwifery care? Throughout her VBAC prep, Gesa was able to directly compare the two side by side. She was planning a home birth with a midwife but continued to see her OB at the hospital for the insurance benefits. Some differences she noted: Her OB used ultrasound to determine baby's position. Her midwife palpated her belly.Her midwife ran a blood test to check iron levels, and then suggested an iron supplement. Her OB did not track iron.OB visits were typically a few minutes long. Visits with her midwife were an hour or longer in her home. The hospital required cervical checks, laboring in a mask, continuous monitoring, and only allowed one support person. The way Gesa navigated her care is so inspiring. Her midwife was hands-on during pregnancy in all of the best ways and just as hands-off during birth to let the physiological process take over. Gesa's story is exactly why we love HBAC so much!Needed WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Julie:  Good morning, Women of Strength. I am really excited to be back here with you. This is Julie, and it is my first official episode back doing regular episodes. Just like we talked about a couple of weeks ago, I'm going to be doing– or was it last week? I can't remember what week it is. But we are going to be doing every other episode alternating between me and Meagan for the most part. I'm really excited to be back here. We have a really special guest with us today. But before we get into that, I want to say that I just got back from South Korea two weeks ago. No, two days ago. If you haven't listened to Paige's episode for her maternal assisted C-section, go listen to the episode that launched on December 2nd. I do believe it was maybe episode 357. Me and Paige are talking and sharing her story. I am literally so jet-lagged right now. It is going to be a morning for me for sure. If I'm a little clunkier than usual or my brain doesn't work just right, just be a little patient with me, please, because the jet lag is absolutely real. Before we do get started though and introduce our guest, I want to read a review. Meagan sent me a review this morning, and I think it's really interesting because she sent me this review this morning. It's a 1-star review, and you might be curious as to why I'm choosing to read a 1-star review, but I'll tell you a little bit more afterward why I picked that. This one is on Apple Podcasts. This person said, “Listened to 10 episodes, and found that the stories they choose to share are usually always the same with a twist. Didn't find any episodes that said ‘A C-section saved me and my baby's life' so lots of bias and fear-mongering from people who are selling female empowerment. Maybe I'm missing the episode where the hosts say that sometimes it's okay to have a C-section. With all of these birth stories, you would think I could relate with one, but I find that the anecdotes shared in this podcast are a really easy way to avoid talking about women who are actually statistical outliers.” I think that episode is really interesting. First of all, I appreciate everybody's views and perspectives. But also, I think that review is a little bit interesting because she said she has listened to 10 episodes. I'm just assuming it's a she. Maybe that's not the right way to do that. She said she has only listened to 10 episodes. It's interesting because I wonder what 10 she picked. I feel like, isn't it maybe a sign that all of the stories are similar because our healthcare system needs a lot of work? Clearly, if so many women are having trauma and unnecessary C-sections, isn't that a sign that something needs to change? I know that a lot of us have struggled with unnecessary C-sections and really traumatic treatment in the hospital systems, so I don't know. I wanted to bring that up because first of all, we do have many, many episodes where C-sections were necessary. We've talked a lot about that how C-sections are lifesaving procedures when they are necessary. I feel like we do a pretty good job leaving space for all of the stories, but let me know what you think. Go to the Instagram post today about this episode, and let me know. What do you think? Do you think we do a pretty good job? Do you think we need to have a little bit more talking about C-sections that are actually necessary and lifesaving? Do you think it's unequally represented? Let me know. I want to start a discussion about this. Go ahead and leave a comment. Let's talk about it. But I do know that me and Meagan have been very intentional with sharing a wide variety of stories and outcomes and necessary and unnecessary C-sections. Hopefully, you feel well represented no matter what side of the view you are on. Anyway, we are going to go ahead and get started now. Today, I have a really awesome guest. Her name is Gesa, and she lives in Charleston, South Carolina. She is a mom of two boys. She had a C-section with her first baby. The C-section was because of a breech presentation after she tried everything to turn him. Knowing that she absolutely did not want to have a C-section for her second baby, she navigated the difficult search for a truly supportive provider and ended up having a successful HBAC, or home birth after Cesarean, after having some challenges to get labor started. We are super excited to hear her story. We are going to talk more at the end about how to find the right provider for your birth and your birth after a Cesarean after she goes ahead and shares her story with us. All right, Gesa. Are you there?Gesa: I'm here. Julie:  Yay. I'm so excited to have you with me today. Thank you so much for joining me, and again, for being patient with all of my technical issues this morning. Gesa: Of course. Julie:  But I will go ahead and would like to turn it over to you. You can share your story with us, and yeah. I'm excited to hear it. Gesa: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here and share my story. Okay, let's start with my first birth which was my C-section. Everything was going well at the beginning of the pregnancy. I was feeling a little bit nauseous, but overall, feeling well. Then at the anatomy scan, I found out that my baby was breech. I was like, “Wait, what does that mean? What does that mean for birth? What's going on with that?” We had so much time left. The provider was not worried at all. It was around 20 weeks so we thought we had plenty of time at that point. Babies are little. They flip-flop around. I was not concerned at all. As time progressed, he continued to stay breech, so he did not flip on his own. During one of my OB appointments, I was basically told, “Well, if your baby does not turn head down, we're just going to have to have a C-section.” There were really no other options given. At that point, I was actually planning a natural birth at a hospital, so that was not really what I had in mind. We had also taken a Hypnobirthing class which was awesome. We learned so much about birth and pregnancy that I had no idea about. Hearing that I was going to need a C-section if he wasn't going to turn head down was really not what I wanted. I started looking into things I could do to help him turn. I started doing Spinning Babies exercises. I started seeing a chiropractor. I did acupuncture. I even did moxibustion at some point which is really fun. It was a Chinese herb that you burn by your toe, and that's supposed to create fetal movement and help the baby flip which unfortunately did not help. I was out in the pool doing handstands and backflips about every day. I was lying on my ironing board at some point with a bag of frozen peas on my belly. I really tried everything possible to get this baby to flip. Nothing worked. I ended up trying to have the ECV at about 37 weeks. That's the version where they try to manually flip the baby from the outside. She gave it a good try to attempt, and he would not move. It was that his head felt stuck under my ribs. It was very uncomfortable. He was very comfortable where he was at. They had me schedule the C-section which I was really unhappy about, but at that point, I didn't really see any other option. It was about my 37-38 week appointment, and the OB wanted to talk a little bit more about the details of the C-section which made me really emotional because that was not what I wanted. I started crying during the appointment, then the nurse comes in and says, “Hey, we actually forgot to check your blood pressure. Let's do that really quick.” I was like, “I'm sure that's going to be great now that I'm all emotional and crying here.” Of course, the blood pressure was higher than it was supposed to be. The OB started joking, “Oh, maybe we'll have a baby today. Maybe we're just going to do an emergency C-section,” which was not what I wanted to hear at all. It made me even more emotional. I remember sitting in the office crying. Now, I had this high blood pressure. My husband handed me this magazine of puppies or kittens. He said, “Sit here. Chill out and just relax. Look at the kittens. They'll retake your blood pressure, and I'm sure it's going to be fine.” I was like, “Oh my god. Nothing is fine right now.” It ended up coming down a little bit. They still sent me to the hospital for some additional monitoring. It was all good, and we ended up being sent home. But I just felt so unsupported and so unheard in that moment. When I was thinking about the C-section, I was even considering at some point what happens if I just don't show up for my C-section appointment and just waited to see if I'd go into labor? But then I thought, “Maybe an emergency C-section would not be any better than a planned.” I had a friend who had an emergency C-section, and she said that the recovery was really difficult so that's also not really what I wanted. I went ahead and showed up to the hospital for my scheduled C-section at 39 weeks and 1 day. But I was so emotional. I was crying on the way to the hospital. I was crying at the hospital. Everybody was really nice at the hospital, but it was just not what I wanted. The idea of them cutting my body open and removing the baby was just so far away from what I had envisioned. The C-section went well. I really did not have any major issues. But recovery was pretty rough. He was pretty big. He was 9.5 pounds and 21 inches long. Recovery was a little rough. He had also a really difficult time with breastfeeding. He had a really weak suck. I just kept thinking, “What if he was not done cooking? What if they got him too early? He wasn't ready to be born yet.” We found out later that he had a tongue and a lip tie that the hospital failed to diagnose which just made things even more difficult. I, overall, hated my stay at the hospital. I felt like I was not getting any rest at all the whole time I was there. My son didn't like sleeping in the bassinet because why would he? I felt like there were people coming in all of the time and interrupting the little bit of rest that I was trying to get. They were checking on me, checking on the baby, taking temperatures, the photographer, the cleaning people. It was just like people were coming and going. The only person who did not show up who I hoped would show up was the lactation consultant. She did not show up for almost two days which was really, really disappointing. The first few months were pretty hard. I would say they were pretty rough emotionally and physically. When people ask me about my birth, a lot of times, I got comments like, “Well, at least he's healthy” or “Oh, your baby's really big, so it was probably good that you had that C-section.” That really upset me because I understand that it's important for my baby to be healthy. Yes, that is the most important thing. But at the same time, my feelings are valid about it, and my emotions. I felt really robbed of that experience to birth my own child. The fact that I had never felt even a single contraction really was upsetting to me. I felt that my body had really failed me. Yeah. I knew that if I ever were to get pregnant again, I would not want to have another C-section. So let's fast forward to my second pregnancy.I got pregnant again when my son was a little over a year and a half. Like I said, I knew exactly what I didn't want, and that was to have another C-section. When I found out I was pregnant, I pretty much immediately jumped on Facebook group and mom groups trying to do my research and find a truly supportive provider. I did call a birth center here in Charleston, and they told me right away, “We don't do VBACs. Sorry. You can't come here,” which was pretty upsetting because they basically see a VBAC or having had a C-section before is a high-risk pregnancy for your next which really does not make a lot of sense because every pregnancy is different. Just because you had a C-section, there can be so many different reasons. You should not be considered high-risk for your next pregnancy. I found a provider who I thought was VBAC-supportive. It seemed like that was my only option, so I started seeing her. As I was seeing my OB further into my pregnancy, I started asking some questions about birth. I really didn't like some of the answers she had for me. I asked about intermittent monitoring. She said, “No, we can't do that. Hospital policy is that you have to have continuous monitoring.” I didn't love the idea of being strapped to the bed. I wanted to move around freely. That was not going to be an option. I asked about eating. I got the answer, “No, we don't really allow eating while you are in labor. You can have clear fluids.” I was just thinking, “I don't want to eat ice chips while I'm in labor. If I'm hungry, I want to be able to eat.” I asked if I could labor in the bathtub because they did have tubs at the hospital. She said, “No, because of the continuous monitoring, you're not going to be able to get in the tub.” Hearing all of that made me really uncomfortable. Whenever I did ask questions, it almost felt like she didn't really want to talk about it. She didn't really want to talk about my birth plan which was really important to me. Now, at the same time, it was also COVID. I got pregnant with my second literally the week before people started quarantining for COVID. On top of all of these things that I didn't like about the hospital, there were also the COVID restrictions. I had to show up to my appointments in a mask which was totally fine, but the idea of having to labor in a mask made me a little uncomfortable. I was thinking about hiring a doula, and because they were only allowing one support person at the time, that was also not going to be an option. I knew my son wasn't going to be able to see me at the hospital which was something I was really looking forward to. I kept thinking, “Maybe there has to be another option. This can't be my only option here.” I started looking at places farther away. I was like, “Maybe I can travel to another place further away.” I was looking into birth centers around the area and all over South Carolina, really. At some point, I did come across a website that said they were offering VBAC support. I didn't really know what that meant, but I filled out a form. I said, “Hey, I need some help with a provider. I'm seeing an OB, but I'm not feeling super comfortable.” I submitted that form. I want to say that maybe a couple of days or a couple of weeks later, a midwife called me. She was like, “Hey, I'm not in your area, but I actually know a lot of people all over the state. Let me send an email to my network, and we'll see if we can find somebody who can help you.” One day, I got a call from a home birth midwife here in Charleston. She was like, “Hey, I got your message. Tell me how I can help you.” We talked a little bit about home birth. At that point, I was like, “Do I really want a home birth?” It was not something I had really considered.” During that HypnoBirthing class when I was pregnant with my first son, we watched a lot of videos of water births and home births. I always thought it was really cool, and I would love to have that experience, but at that moment, when she asked me, “Hey, would you consider a home birth?” I was like, “I need to think about that for a second.” I talked about it with my husband. I did a lot of research on home birth. I ended up sending her all of my medical records from my first pregnancy. We continued talking and checking. I continued to see my OB, and that was really for a variety of reasons. First of all, I had really good health insurance. All of my visits were covered, so all of the DNA tests, and things like the anatomy scan were covered by my health insurance, and it was just easy to coordinate those things with my OB. I also wanted to continue my care just in case there was something that would pop up that would prevent me from having a home birth and those plans would fall through. I'm a big planner, so I like having not just the plan, but also a plan B and a plan C. Yeah. I also like that established relationship just in case I needed a home birth transfer to the hospital. I've heard stories where moms were treated very differently when they arrived at a hospital with a home birth transfer, and in the case that I would have needed that, I could have just shown up to the hospital and said, “Hey, I'm a patient. I'm here. I'm in labor,” without them knowing that it was really a home birth transfer. I did not tell my OB that I was actually planning a home birth. I think she would have been pretty upset. Maybe she would have fired me. I don't know. But the difference in care that I received from the OB and from the midwife was really, really interesting. It seemed like at my OB appointments, there was a lot of focus on different tests and procedures like my weight. Further down, they wanted to do lots of cervical checks which I all declined. At the same time, when I talked to my midwife, the focus was a lot more on nutrition and on exercise. She was asking, “What do you do to prepare for your VBAC?” Lots of education on birth. There were lots of books that she suggested for me to read. I also started seeing a chiropractor pretty early in the pregnancy. I was doing my homework. I was doing my Spinning Babies exercises. I was so focused on doing everything I could to have the birth that I had envisioned. At some point, my midwife had me do some extra blood draws. She wanted to make sure that my iron levels were okay for the home birth, and they were actually slightly lower than they were supposed to be, so she put me on an iron supplement for a couple of weeks. That was an example of something that the OB never asked about or really cared about. At some point, I was a little bit nervous about the position of my baby. It almost felt like he was lying sideways, and I couldn't really tell. I brought it up to the OB. She was like, “Yeah. Let's get in the ultrasound machine. Let's take a look.” She was trying to feel, but she couldn't really tell. Everything was good. He was head down. Well, I didn't know he was a he because we did not find out the gender. Baby was head down. Everything was okay. I brought up the same thing to the midwife, and it was so funny because she did not need an ultrasound. She just felt. She felt really good. She was like, “Yeah. I know. I feel all of the different body parts. You're head down. You're good.” Of course, she was right. It was just so interesting to see how different things were approached by the two providers. I also hired a doula, and I made sure she was VBAC Link certified. It was really exciting. She was familiar with the podcast that I was, of course, listening to at the time to prepare for my VBAC. At some point, I had a situation with my OB that made me pretty uncomfortable. It was time for the GBS testing, and I had done my research. I made an informed decision. I let her know that I was declining the test. She was not happy to hear it. She kept saying, “Well, if your baby dies–”, and she kept saying that multiple times. It was like, “If your baby dies–”, and I was like, “This is so unprofessional to say it like that.” I totally understand that they need to–Julie:  Oh my gosh. I can't even believe that. Gesa: Yeah. Isn't that horrible?Julie:  That's horrible. Gesa: I understand she needs to educate me on the risks that come with declining certain tests, but that was just not a proper way to communicate that. Julie:  Yeah. Find another way. Find another way. Gesa: Yeah. Right. That situation really confirmed for me home birth was the way to go. I did not want anything to do with this hospital or this OB anymore at that point. I was fully committed to the home birth. I was planning on it. I continued my OB visits more just to check a box. At 37 weeks, my midwife brought over the birthing pool and some supplies. I gathered everything that I needed. She had sent me a list of all of the different supplies that we needed to buy and gather, so I started getting all of that. I created a beautiful birthing space for myself in our bedroom. I had my affirmations up. They were taped to my mirror in the bathroom as daily reminders. I had them hung up in the bedroom with some twinkle lights. I had the picture of the opening flower, and everything was ready. I had my Spotify playlist ready, and I was so excited for baby to come here. Then, at 39 weeks and 1 day, it was early in the morning, like maybe at 6:30 AM. I was lying in bed, and our toddler had climbed into bed with me. I felt a little pop, and I was like, “Hmm, that was weird,” but I didn't really think much of it because pregnancy is weird, and our bodies do all kinds of weird things that we can't explain when we are pregnant. I didn't think much of it. I went back to sleep. An hour later, I got up to go to the bathroom. I sit down on the toilet, and water is gushing out. I was like, “Shoot. What is going on? I'm not peeing. What's happening?” I just realized, “No, my water broke.” I wasn't expecting it at that point because you hear about a lot of women going into 40-41 weeks, 42 weeks, especially with their first pregnancy that they are going into natural labor, so I was so surprised that it happened at 39 weeks and a day. I was feeling a tiny bit of cramping, but definitely did not have any contractions. I texted my husband, “Oh my gosh. My water broke.” He was out for a workout, so he rushed home. I also texted my doula and my midwife just to let them know what was going on, but then the whole day was really uneventful. I was ready and waiting for labor to start. It just didn't. I went on a lot of walks. I tried some curb walking. I bounced on the yoga ball. I ended up getting a last-minute appointment with my chiropractor for a quick adjustment. I really spent all day just trying to get labor started. I took some naps. I also tried using the breast pump for some stimulation to get things going. I got some tiny little contractions. At that time, I thought they were contractions, but now that I know what contractions actually feel like, I realize that was not actually the case. I got some tiny contractions going, but then they fizzled out again. My midwife stopped by a few times to check on me and baby. She had me take my temperature every 4 hours and text it to her just to make sure I wasn't running a fever. Baby was moving normally. She wasn't overly concerned. She assured me that my body was probably just waiting until nighttime when my toddler was in bed and I was relaxed for things to start then. It was weird because I was leaking amniotic fluid all day, so I tried to stay super hydrated and replenish all of that water I was losing. I went to bed and thought, “Okay. This is it. We're going to have a baby maybe early in the morning. Labor is going to start.” Nothing happened. I woke up really early and really disappointed that nothing had happened. My midwife had sent me some information on PROM, so premature rupture of membranes, just to make sure I was making an informed decision. She always gave me the option to go to the hospital. She said that I could go in the evening of when my water broke. She said I could wait until the next day and do whatever I felt comfortable with, but she wanted me to be aware of the dangers with having a long time of broken waters. She also had sent me a recipe to the midwives' brew. That was something we talked about to get labor started. She said, “Something to consider for the next day if you don't have your baby overnight.” My husband went out. He bought the ingredients just in case. It was castor oil, almond butter, apricot nectar, and champagne. It was absolutely disgusting. It actually ruined almond butter for me for at least 2-3 years. I could not have it anymore. It was so gross. Julie:  Oh my gosh. That is so funny. That is funny. Gesa: I took it around 10:00 AM in the morning. At that point, my water had been broken for over 24 hours. I layed down for a nap, and maybe 2 hours later, I started feeling some contractions. They were coming in. I was just laying in bed breathing through them and listening to my HypnoBirthing affirmations and some relaxing music. My husband was actually taking a nap at that time with our son. At some point, things were getting pretty intense. I texted my doula and my midwife. I was trying to time contractions but it was also difficult. They both came over around 2:00 PM and realized pretty quickly that labor was going. They needed to fill that pool because that actually takes a while which was not something I was even thinking about.They quickly got the birthing pool filled. Once I got in the water, it was such a difference. At that point, I had some really, really heavy contractions and I think I got in there around 3:00 PM. It was such a night and day difference. My doula was awesome. She was rubbing my back. She was giving me cold washcloths on my neck. Yeah. She was super helpful. I was laboring in the tub. At some point, I needed to get out to go to the bathroom. As soon as I got out, I instantly regretted that decision because it was so horrible and the contractions were feelings so much stronger when I was not in the water. My husband was still sleeping at that point. I was like, “Okay, is somebody going to wake him up before baby comes?” But I also lost track of time of how long I even was in the pool. They did wake him up at some point. It was really funny because when he lay down for a nap, it was just me laboring in bed by myself. They woke up from the nap, and I was in full, active labor in the birthing pool with the doula and the midwife there, full action going on. He was just like, “Whoa, what's happening?” Yeah. He jumped right into action and helping me out and massaging and all of that good stuff. It was really sweet because my son kept bringing toys. He was a little over 2. He was 2 years and 3 months at that point. He kept bringing over toys. He was playing right next to the pool. He was checking on me. It was just really sweet and really special to have him there. Our dog was also walking around the pool and was really interesting in what was going on. I really lost track of time and of how long I really was in the pool. At some point, I felt some really, really intense pressure. It was almost like my body was pushing on its own without me really actively doing anything. I had heard of the fetal ejection reflex, but I didn't realize that that was what was going on. I didn't realize that baby was already coming. My midwife just looked at me. She was like, “Feeling a little pushy, huh?” I was like, “Yeah, I guess that's what's going on.” It all happened really quickly. My husband got our son situated downstairs because we wanted him to be there, but we didn't want him to be there right as baby was born. We thought that may have been a little bit too much for him, so we got him situated downstairs. Yeah, things happened really quickly. All of a sudden, his head was out. It was really fun because we got to feel his hair, and I did not have another contraction for a minute which was weird because his head was out. It was underwater, and it felt like a really, really long time between contractions. But then he was out with the next one, and my midwife caught him. He came right to my chest. My husband got to announce that he was a boy which I knew all along. We didn't find out his gender, but I just knew he was going to be a boy. My pregnancy was just so similar that I was like, “There's no way he's not a boy.” But yeah. He was born a little after 4:00 PM, so really just 6 hours from when I had the midwives' brew, so that really worked for me. Of course, I cried tears of joy. The amount of emotions I was feeling was just absolutely incredible. The rush of endorphins, I felt so empowered and so strong in that moment, like literally the strongest person in the world. It was awesome. We brought my son up and he got to meet his baby brother within minutes of his birth which was so special and such an amazing experience. Once we got settled a bit, I got to take a shower. I got to eat pasta in my bed, and then also safely cosleep with my baby in my own bed and in my own home which was just the complete opposite of that hospital C-section experience. Yeah, the home birth experience was really healing for me in a way. It gave me closure from my C-section experience. I think because I had the C-section, I just knew what I absolutely did not want, and I think that really helped me fight and prepare for my home birth experience. I still had to call my OB and cancel my 40-week appointment which was probably one of the weirdest phone calls I've ever had to made because I was like, “Yeah, I need to cancel my appointment because my baby is actually here.” They were like, “Wait, where was your baby born? We have no records of this.” I was like, “Yeah, he was born at home.” They were like, “You need to get him checked out immediately.”Julie:  You're like, “Yeah, accident.” Gesa: I was like, “No, we had a professional there. It's all good. Don't worry about it. Let's not talk about it anymore.”Julie:  I love that so much. Okay, I want to talk about a couple of things or maybe just comment. When you were talking about your C-section and how you felt guilty about how maybe he was having trouble nursing or whatever and you were feeling guilty that maybe he had been taken too early or he wasn't ready to be born yet and stuff, I felt that so hard with my C-section baby. I just wanted to validate that because I feel like that is not an uncommon thing. I feel like a lot of us have that concern when we have either a scheduled C-section or an induction that results in a C-section or maybe even an induction that results in a vaginal birth. You can look back at it and feel like, “Oh, maybe I made the wrong choice,” or “Maybe he was taken too early,” or things like that. I just wanted to validate that. Know that I see you, and I hear you, and I feel you. And everybody, not just you, but everybody. Try not to be too hard on yourself. I'm not speaking just to you, but everybody. Try not to be too hard on yourself because you were making the best decisions that you could with the information that you had available to you at the time. So give yourself some grace. Give yourself some love. I think that's really important is that we navigate our pregnancies and birth after having an unwanted C-section or an unwanted birth experience. Giving ourselves that grace is a really, really important part of it. I did want to talk about the difference in care. You highlighted a few things in your episode about the difference in care between a hospital OB and having a midwife or especially a home birth midwife. In the hospital, you're still going to see a little bit of similarities between midwifery and OBs, although midwifery care in a hospital is a lot more hands-on and a lot more personal and a lot more trusting, generally speaking, of the birth process. I just was thinking this morning about a post. There was a post in not even a VBAC group. It was just a local mom's group in my community. This woman was talking about how it was her first baby. She hasn't had an ultrasound or seen the baby since 10 weeks. She had a 10-week scan, and she hadn't seen the baby since then. She wasn't 20 weeks pregnant yet, but she was almost. She was just like, “I'm just wondering if this is normal. Every time I have an appointment with my OB, I only see him for 2 minutes. I don't feel like this is normal. I have some concerns, but I'm not being able to ask questions,” and things like that. It made me sad. It made me sad for this parent not being cared for in the way that she needs to be. It also made me sad because her experience is not that uncommon. I wanted to say that unfortunately, this is normal. You're not going to usually see your OB for more than a couple of minutes per visit. You're not going to have time to ask a lot of questions and get a lot of answers because hospitals are busy and OBs are busy. Most of them don't have the time or intentionally make the time to give you that kind of attention. It's just how it is. Now, I say most of the time because there are some OBs. I saw briefly an OB for my third pregnancy, and I love her. She was always 45 minutes late. Our appointments were always 45 minutes late. My appointment would be at 1:45, and I wouldn't get in there until 2:00 because she was giving everybody the attention that they needed. A lot of people get frustrated because she was an hour late for the visits, but I wasn't frustrated because I knew that she was giving other people the same attention that she gave to me. That is so, so rare in a hospital setting. I love that you highlighted that. I love that you talked about how your midwife took time to address your concerns, how she monitored your iron levels and gave your iron supplements and your OB didn't. It wasn't even on his or her radar. I don't know if your OB was a boy or girl. I can't remember. Their radar, right? And how your OB needed an ultrasound to confirm baby's position, but your midwife just palpated your belly because midwives are more hands-on. They are more intimately connected to the female body, to the baby, and to the physiologic birth process. Gesa: Yeah. She was more hands-on during the pregnancy, but then during the actual birth, she was very hands-off. She let me do my own thing. Julie:  Yeah! Yeah. Gesa: She wasn't constantly in my space and interrupting my labor. Julie:  Right. Gesa: She would come in very quietly and very softly. She would check on the baby and check on me, and if everything was good, she was back out the door. She let me labor in my own space and at my own pace which was awesome. Julie:  Right. I was going to talk about that next actually. I've been keeping notes while you have been talking because during your labor, you said you felt that fetal ejection reflex, and your midwife was like, “Oh, feeling pushy are we?” I know exactly what that looks like. I'm not a midwife, but I'm a doula. I've been a doula and a birth photographer, and I know what it looks like when a woman's body is progressing. But in a hospital setting, what do we do? We connect you to monitors. We put an IV in you. We sit at a nurse's station and watch the monitor. That's how we know how you are doing. We use ultrasounds to determine baby's position. We use data and numbers. We look at data to decide how the parent and the baby are doing. But in midwifery care, especially out-of-hospital midwifery care, you use a completely set of tools. We use observation. We are watching. We are listening. We are seeing. We are noticing the movements that are shifting and the sounds as they evolve and change. We are seeing the belly moved. We are seeing all of the different things, and it's a completely different approach. I know exactly what an unmedicated parent looks like as they are getting close to transition. I know the noises that change, what sounds are made, what different subtleties there are. You just learn these things when you actually just watch a laboring person, and notice what is happening. But they don't do that in a hospital. An OB and nurses– probably nurses because they are in the room a little bit more, but your OB won't show up until you start pushing. They don't know what the signs are. All they have is the data on the machine to see if you are doing. I know what approach I approve. Let's just say that. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of home births, especially for VBAC, when the parent feels comfortable there. I just really loved that. My appointments when I had my three VBACs at home, every time I saw my midwife, we would chat for an hour. She did talk about nutrition. I had preeclampsia for my first. My blood pressure was high. I was like, “I don't want high blood pressure,” so she gave me all of these nutritional things to do to help take care of my heart and help make sure that my blood pressure wasn't high. But then what would happen in the hospital? They wait until your blood pressure is high, then they treat it. They don't work on preventing it or making you healthier or things like that. I just feel like there is such a big difference in care. It's not for everybody. That's not where everybody feels safe, but I wanted people to know that home-birth midwives are very skilled. They are very hands-on throughout the pregnancy and oftentimes hands-off during the delivery because we trust these bodies to do what they need to do. Sometimes they do need help, but also observing and watching can help us know when a little bit of extra help is needed. It's such a fun little dance that can be done throughout pregnancy and labor. It's kind of like an art form as much as it is a medical side of things. Midwives are not chicken-dancing hippies that run around your room with incense and pray for a safe delivery. They are skilled medical professionals that have high levels of training and care and can practice in very similar ways that you see in a hospital setting just without all of the extra crap and interventions that are there. Obviously, they can't do surgery, and depending on your state and where you live, there are different restrictions about what out-of-hospital midwives can and cannot do. But a lot of people are surprised to find out how much training and knowledge and skills and procedures that out-of-hospital midwives have access to, so I wanted to talk about that. Yeah. Anyway, Gesa, do you want to give one piece of advice to anybody preparing for a VBAC right now? What would you tell anybody?Gesa: I think a lot of people, when they go to the doctor, they see their OB and they heavily rely on what they are telling them. They almost glorify the OB's advice in a way. We have got to remember that these doctors work for us. We don't work for them, so if we don't feel comfortable with what they are saying, we have the option to go somewhere else, and to take our business somewhere else. The doctors work for us. We don't work for them. It is never too late to switch your provider. I was going back and forth whenever I was pregnant with my first, and I was very late into my pregnancy. I kept thinking, “What if I just find a provider who does breech births?” In a way, I wish I had, but then you never know what actually would have happened, so it's hard to say how that would have changed my experience. I could have still ended up with a C-section, but I could have. I could have changed my provider at 38 weeks if I had contacted somebody, but I was just so overwhelmed by the whole situation that I didn't. But I was so glad that when I wasn't feeling comfortable with my OB during my second pregnancy and with what she was saying, that I took the step to find somebody who was truly supportive and who was able to help me with the birth that I had envisioned. Julie:  Yes. I absolutely love that. I think that's great advice. You make a very good point. It's never too late to switch providers. I think that the single most important thing that you can do to affect your birth outcome is to choose a provider who operates in the way that you want to birth just naturally. It's just what they do anyway. I feel like if you do that, then that's half the battle. Gesa: Yeah. 100%. I know some people feel very comfortable at the hospital, and a lot of people are not good candidates for a home birth. Julie:  Yeah, and that's where they should be. Gesa: When I told people that I was planning a home birth, I got a lot of people saying, “Are you sure? That's so scary.” If that's scary to you, then you shouldn't do it. If you feel safer in a hospital, go ahead. There's nothing wrong with that. Go to the hospital. Have your baby there if that's where you feel comfortable. For me, just the thought of having to fight for certain things while I'm in labor and very vulnerable wasn't something I wanted to do. I wanted to focus on laboring and birthing and just having that experience. I did not want to get into fights with OBs and nurses over whatever I could or could not do while at the hospital. That just did not sound like a good idea to me. Julie:  Yep. Absolutely. I agree, 100%. All right, well thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for sharing your story with us. I'm super proud of you. You said that after your baby was born, you felt like the strongest woman ever. I agree. You are the strongest woman ever along with all of the women listening right now. We are truly Women of Strength, and no matter how your birth outcome ends, you are strong. You are powerful. I'm very grateful to each of you.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

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Women of Strength! We have another beautiful VBAC birth story for you today from our friend, Georyana. Georyana shares how she went from having an unplanned Cesarean with her first birth to a planned HBAC but unexpected breech delivery!During her first postpartum period, Georyana experienced postpartum preeclampsia, depression, and anxiety. She and Meagan dive into coping tools and resources available for anyone else going through the same.While prepping for her VBAC, Georyana also talks about the power she felt while listening to other stories on The VBAC Link Podcast. She knew she had to give her body the chance to show what it was capable of. “If it could happen for her, it could happen for me. Why disqualify myself? Why disqualify my body?”Needed WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. Merry Christmas to you. It's so fun to be recording today. It's actually not even October. It's September when we are recording, but it's so fun to think how close we are to Christmas. I hope you guys are having an amazing day, and if you are listening the day after Christmas, I hope you had an amazing Christmas. We have our friend, Georyana, with us today, and she is from Florida. Hello, love. How are you? Georyana: I'm doing well. How are you? Meagan: I am so, so great. I was going to say that as you may hear, she's got her little one on board, so we may hear all of the little baby coos and noises. What is your baby's name? Georyana: Her name is Sophia Victoria. Meagan: Sophia Victoria. I love it. I'm so happy she's here. I actually love when we have babies because I don't really hear those noises anymore. I hear them as a doula for a minute, but I miss those little coos. It's so fun. Okay, like I was saying, she is from Florida. She's a stay-at-home mom of two beautiful babies, a three-year-old and this one-month-old that she's got with us. She works part-time remotely and is a Christian and serves as a worship leader for the youth group worship team. Is that correct?Georyana: Yes. Meagan: Awesome. I love that. She says that she's officially started homeschooling her toddler this year which is super exciting. That is exciting. We've had so many moms on the podcast lately who are like, “I've quit my job. I'm homeschooling,” or “My full-time job is homeschooling.” That's amazing. Georyana: Yeah. Yeah. It really is just to be able to soak in all of these moments with your kids. Time flies so fast. You just want to treasure everything. Meagan: It's so true. It really does. I have a 7th grader which is crazy, so yeah. Super crazy. Remind me, you used Needed's iron?Georyana: Yes. I've actually used it for postpartum.Meagan: Yes. I wanted to talk about that because we talk about their prenatals and all of the other things to do during pregnancy. We haven't really talked about the iron, so can we talk a little bit about why you're taking iron and how it's been?Georyana: Yeah, so after this pregnancy funny enough which is something I'll tell during my story, but I passed out after I gave birth. I believe it was due to a lot of blood loss and low hemoglobin, so after I gave birth, I kept taking my prenatals, but my prenatals only had 15 milligrams of iron in them. That's when I decided to go for Needed. I had heard of a lot of amazing reviews. I had heard about it too on The VBAC Link. I'm only taking one additional per day, so I'm taking around 30 milligrams of iron. Meagan: Have you noticed a difference?Georyana: Tremendously. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely less fatigue, more energy. I was getting dizzy a lot during the early days of postpartum and breastfeeding, so that helped a lot too. Meagan: That's what I was going to say. It's probably helping you breastfeed as well. Georyana: Yeah. It's definitely an amazing supplement. Meagan: That's so awesome to hear. I believe in Needed's products wholeheartedly, so it's so fun to see that other people are loving it too. We do have a Review of the Week, so I want to get into that really quickly, then we are going to turn the time over to you to share these stories. This is from nnoah and it says, “Generational trauma”. It says, “This podcast and the Facebook group have been a godsend to me. After my 56-hour failed induction and emergency C-section due to very low heart decelerations with my daughter, I told my husband I would be happily scheduling my C-sections from now on. My sister-in-law told me I could VBAC, but I had no hope that my body could birth after such a drawn-out process that ended in ‘failure'. My mom had three C-sections herself with the first being highly traumatic, and I never realized how much her birth experience has influenced my own physiological state as I approached labor and delivery. I researched everything with my first from breastfeeding to infant development and sleep, but I did not read a single book or take a single class on birth. Now, I realize it was because of how much fear and trauma I was carrying around with me from my mother's experiences. I walked into birth ready to fail because I didn't think I could do it. I wasn't tough enough.”She says, “After listening to this podcast, it has me believing in my body and preparing my mind even more before we try to conceive our next baby. I have begun working through my birth with How to Heal a Bad Birth,” which we absolutely love if you want a good book on how to heal a bad birth. That is one of our favorites. It says, “I've already interviewed a VBAC-Link certified doula to assist me in my next birth when we conceive. The resources, podcast, and recommendations here have had me anticipating my next birth with excitement rather than dread. I couldn't be more grateful for this resource. Thank you.” Wow. So many things within that review. I one, am so thankful for that amazing review, and I want you to know that we are here for you and this community and these stories are here to help empower you even further going into your next birth. I love that she said that she had a doula before she was even conceived. She's found the doula she's going to hire, and as soon as she conceives, she can hire that doula. As a reminder, just like she said, we have a VBAC directory with VBAC-certified doulas. You can go to thevbaclink.com/findadoula and look for a doula in your area.Okay, mama. Oh, look at this cute little baby with a full head of hair. Georyana: Yeah, she had a lot of hair. That's how she was born, with a lot of hair. Meagan: Her hair was probably born first. It's so long, oh my gosh. Oh, I'd love to turn the time over to you to share these stories of yours. Georyana: Okay. Well, just like every VBAC, it starts with a C-section. Mine was in 2021 with my first son. It was an overall healthy pregnancy quote-on-quote. Every prenatal visit was normal for the most part. There was nothing out of whack. I do want to be transparent and say that I did not eat healthy or exercise knowing that I was supposed to. I remember working at this part-time job, and literally after I was done clocking out, I would go straight for the Chick-fil-A. It was Chick-fil-A every day. I ended up gaining around 87 pounds during my pregnancy. Meagan: Wow, okay. Georyana: I was 215 when I delivered. At around 39 weeks with my OB/GYN, she was like, “I want to schedule a C-section because your baby's measuring really big.” We did the whole– I forget the word– where they actually check the baby's weight. Meagan: Oh, like a growth measurement in an ultrasound. Georyana: Yeah, she was like, “This baby is already a 10-pounder.” I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I was freaking out because I really wanted to give birth naturally. That was something I had told her about, but she was like, “No, let's schedule a C-section.” We were going back and forth, and she was like, “Okay, well at least we are going to get an induction date.” She set up an induction date for March 15th. It was a Monday. I started going into labor. I started going into labor on Friday spontaneously. I went into spontaneous labor. I didn't really know that much about laboring at home and all of the things like right now that I know you're supposed to do. Yeah. I had labored at home for an hour or two until contractions started getting intense. I went to the hospital which was an hour away. I checked in. They checked me. I was 2 centimeters dilated, and they took my blood pressure. They were like, “You have high blood pressure.” They didn't give me a reading or anything, but they were like, “We're going to make you stay. We're going to have you stay. We're not going to send you home.” I was like, “Okay. You guys know what you're doing.” I started laboring for an hour or two, and then a nurse came in and I had explained, “I really want to try and go for a natural birth.” She was like, “Okay. I'm going to give you an hour. I'm going to give you an hour.” Meagan: What?Georyana: “I'm going to give you an hour and see where you are as far as dilation and as far as progressing.” I was like, “Okay.” An hour went by. Mind you, I was strapped to the chair because there's something that you're never really taught, to move around while you are laboring. At the one-hour mark, she comes in. She checks me, and I've gone nowhere. She goes, “I'm going to put you on Pitocin.” Things started getting really crazy at that point because it was my first time feeling contractions, and those contractions were horrible. They are so intense, and now having had experienced these natural contractions from my VBAC, you can automatically tell the difference. She puts me on Pitocin. I labor and I had my husband with me. It was back-to-back contractions to the point where I could barely breathe. I had taken one birth class, but it was the standard information. They never really teach you how to breathe or the importance of getting your mind right, and the importance of your mind and how it plays such a huge role in birth.I just kept laboring. I kept literally squeezing my husband's hand. I couldn't allow him to go anywhere. It was horrible. As the hours passed, things started getting worse and worse. They ended up breaking my water. Then it was more Pitocin. It was already Saturday the next day. I hadn't drank anything. I hadn't eaten anything. There was no ice. There was nothing. Yeah. It just felt horrible. I just stayed. At one point, I couldn't handle the pain anymore so I asked for an epidural. Crazy enough, when the anesthesiologist came, he was with a student. He had asked the student to put the epidural inside of me. They had me sign a consent form. I was like, “Oh my gosh, what is this?” I had heard about the epidural and that it was supposed to numb you, but I never expected to get to that point.I got the epidural, then I just started feeling numb. It numbed me completely down. The day went by. It was Saturday, then I eventually reached a 10. It was 10 PM on that Saturday. I was like, “Okay, well I want to try and push.” I tried to push for an hour or two, and basically, that went nowhere because they had me pushing on my back. They were trying to tell me, “Just try and push as if you are trying to go to the bathroom and poop.” It was just so frustrating because I was trying, and nothing was working. Eventually, they were like, “Your son's heart rate is dropping. We just have to do a C-section.” When she told me that, I felt like my world came crashing down because I didn't want it at all. But in that moment, as a mom, you are so vulnerable. You are going through so many emotions mentally, emotionally, physically, and so many things that it's just so hard to make a decision. Obviously, you want what's best for your baby. I was like, “Okay. Let's just do a C-section.” They didn't put me to sleep entirely. It was just my legs, but I just remembered that when they did that, I lost it. I had a very severe panic attack. I was like, “I can't feel my legs. I can't feel my legs.” There were all of these nurses around trying to calm me down. Eventually, we went to the C-section room. My husband was with me, and they did the procedure. My son was born thankfully. They made sure he was okay. They put him near my chest for a minute. They cut the cord and all of the things. But I didn't know what to expect. I thought that was what I was supposed to expect, to have him for a minute and to have him take him away. I didn't have anything else. So nothing, I stayed at the hospital for an entire week because my blood pressure rose drastically. Meagan: Did you have postpartum preeclampsia?Georyana: Yeah, technically. Without the seizures, thank God, but the blood pressure was crazy high. There was a nurse coming in every 2-3 hours to check my blood pressure. I got medication. Yeah. It was just a horrible moment because right there, you just gave birth to this human being while your body is out of whack going through all of these things, and you just feel like you failed. You feel like you failed, and you just did a horrible job. But you know, I just kept in-hospital, and one week later, I was released. The C-section recovery was horrible. It was very, very painful. I couldn't even walk or anything. Taking care of the baby was just really hard for me. Yeah. Eventually, my blood pressure got back to normal, and everything was well. I suffered from postpartum depression and severe anxiety to the point where my husband would go to work, and I would stay alone in the house. I would think that I was going to die of a heart attack. Meagan: Oh, yeah.Georyana: Yeah. My mental health was bizarre. I constantly felt like I was dying. I remember one night, I woke up in sweats. I just felt like I couldn't breathe. We had called the emergency 9-1-1. I literally felt like I was dying of a heart attack. They checked me and were like, “No, you're fine. It's just an anxiety attack.” Postpartum was definitely not the greatest experience for me for the first. Meagan: I am so sorry to hear that happened. Georyana: Yeah, but other than that, I'm so grateful to God that my son is healthy. He's currently 3 years old, and he is just a joy to be around. Meagan: Yeah. Do you have any resources or suggestions for someone who may have experienced that before or just in general for someone listening in case they have any symptoms or anything like that that you want to share?Georyana: For what specifically?Meagan: For postpartum anxiety and panic attacks and stuff to maybe help recognize what it could be or resources that helped you. Georyana: Yeah, definitely my biggest resource was God, the church, and prayer. I think that helped me a lot and just having a community of people who you can count on whether that's a friend or your mom where you can say, “Hey, mom. I'm going through this. Hey friend, I'm going through this. Pray for me. Come over. Please help me. Please help me do some chores,” or anything like that. The weight is a lot. Once you've given birth, you're thinking about a million things– the baby, the diapers, yourself, the kitchen is a mess, and you definitely need to have the support group to lean on. But as far as anxiety, learn where your mind is going. Be able to detect those thoughts that creep in and that tell you, “Hey, you're not doing a good job. You're going to die. This is going to happen.” Learn to stop those thoughts or reframe. Reframe your mind. We have so much power in our minds. Meagan: Yep.Georyana: If we only knew where it could take us. Meagan: Yeah. I agree. Our minds are so powerful, and there is something about that community that can really, really help. There are even more resources like deeper resources. There is postpartum support, Baby Your Baby, and so many things. We talk about this in our course, and I won't go through all of them, but I think it's so important to do a self-care checklist after. Think about, “Have I eaten enough? Have I slept enough?” You want at least 5 hours of sleep. Most of us with newborns can say no to that automatically, so maybe doing something like hiring a postpartum doula, having our mother-in-law come, having our community come in to help and hold baby so we can get really good and effective sleep. Have a bath or a shower. Just getting ready for the day is weird but can help us mentally. It can help us get out of that mental funk. Exercise– now, we can't really do that in the beginning. But have I exercised is another question. Have I allowed myself to laugh today? Have I allowed myself to smile today? These are things. There are many more. Like I said, we talk about those in our VBAC course because it is so important. It's not talked about enough, so I'm so glad that you were able to take this space to feel vulnerable enough to talk about this experience. Georyana: Definitely. I agree. Right now, for this postpartum, I have my mom. She lives 30 minutes away. She comes twice a week and helps me cook meals. Meagan: So good. Georyana: Yeah. They are delicious. You just have to be willing to take the help. There is definitely help. Yeah. It's important that we don't feel alone. Meagan: Yeah, I agree. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. Sorry, we can go on to this next birth story. Georyana: This next birth story– my husband and I knew that we wanted another baby, but we just didn't know when would be the right time. 2.5 years passed. We got pregnant. It was a surprise. It was a surprise and a blessing. All I knew inside of me was that I wanted a VBAC. I wanted a VBAC. I was like, “You know what? I'm going to try for it again.” I was obviously open to the fact that it could end in a C-section. I didn't have a closed mind in that sense. I ended up searching for supportive providers. After finding one, I found an OB/GYN. The first thing that I had asked was, “Do you support VBACs?” They were like,”Yeah, we do. We do.” They had five doctors on board, so basically, every prenatal visit had a different doctor so that eventually when I would go into labor, one of them was going to be assisting my birth. To each one, I would always ask the same thing, “Hey, I would like to do this. Do you support it?” They were like, “Yeah, we do that.” My blood pressure was great at every prenatal visit. There were no concerns. I did change a lot of what I had previously done in my previous pregnancy which is that I started exercising. I started walking 30 minutes 3 or 4 times a week. I started eating healthier because I think that's one of the things that most people don't talk about too is the importance of nutrition. It is important in pregnancy. You're always told that you have another human being and you have to eat for two. You're like, “Yeah, let's eat for two,” and you gain 10, 20, 30 pounds. I tried to be mindful of what I was eating. Long story short, everything was going great. At my 32-week appointment, I met with a provider. I meet with one of the doctors on the team, and my same question pops up. She's like, “Oh, you can't really go past 40 weeks here. You can't.” I'm like, “Why? I'm perfectly healthy. My blood pressure is fine. Why can't I go a day past 40 weeks?” She was like, “No, you can't. You actually have to schedule your C-section date right now. You have to sign a consent form. You have to put your due date as your C-section date.”My due date was August 1st. I was like, “Well, I don't understand.” I was just feeling led on because, during the prenatal appointments, there were subtle signs, but I guess I didn't really want to pay attention to them because I was like, “Oh my gosh. I can't imagine switching providers.” I was 7 months pregnant. I was like, “Okay, thank you. I'm just going to call back and schedule that C-section.” I remember going home and being like, “Wow. This really just happened.” I remember that I started praying. I told God. I expressed how I felt. I was just very overwhelmed and, “Is this really the path that you have for me?” I felt that he just told me, “Do a home birth.” I was like, “What? A home birth? That is not–” Meagan: That's not what I've been looking at at all. Georyana: That is insane. Funny enough, I started researching, is that truly an option for me? After researching, I found a midwife. She is actually Chrisitan, a pastor, a worship leader, and a midwife. Meagan: Wow. She wears a lot of hats. Georyana: She wears a lot of hats. I don't know how she does it, but I expressed to her, “Am I able to do a home birth if I had high blood pressure during my previous pregnancy?” She was like, “Yeah. We will monitor you. We will make sure you are taking care of yourself.” She did tell me, “During labor, if your blood pressure skyrockets, we'll have a plan in place and we will go to the hospital.” We had plan A and plan B. I spent the last 2 months with her. She would come to my house, and check my blood pressure. She had me drinking lots and lots of water which is another thing that we underestimate or is not often talked about. Meagan: We do. We really don't. We usually drink water, but we're not getting enough of the hydration.Georyana: 100%. She was like, “You need to be drinking at least half of your weight in water.” All I remember was that every day, I was chugging water. She actually advised me to take Calm as a magnesium supplement. Meagan: MagCalm? Georyana: Yeah, MagCalm. That helped tremendously. That helped tremendously. Everything was safe and sound. I was doing all of the things at 37 weeks– the Miles Circuit, the red raspberry leaf tea. I was eating the dates and all of the things that they tell you to VBAC. I was listening to a lot of birth stories, especially on The VBAC Link which just helped me tremendously because I was able to get in a right mindset. The birth stories edified my faith to a whole other level. I just remember every day doing dishes and I was plugging in a story. Every story was different, and I was like, “Wow. If it could happen for her, it could happen for me. Why disqualify myself? Why disqualify my body?” That's another thing that we do a lot. We often hear, “Oh no, your body wasn't meant to do it” or “Your body can't do it”.Meagan: Yep, yeah. We hear those things, and then we believe them. Georyana: Yeah, that's the sad part. I think I was 39 weeks and 3 days. I go into labor. My water broke at 3:00 in the morning, but I need to backtrack that. At 38 weeks, my midwife checked me. I had asked her to check me. She checked me, and I was 3 centimeters dilated. The baby was head down. The baby was head down. Everything was normal and everything was looking good. She came back at 39 weeks, and I was like, “Can you check me again to see if I've progressed?” Even though that doesn't really mean anything, I was just so excited. She checks me, and she's like, “I don't know what I'm feeling, but I'm not feeling the head anymore.” Meagan: Oh, okay. Georyana: Yeah. I'm like, “What do you mean you're not feeling the head?” She checks, and she's like, “I don't know if that is her hand or her knees or something like that, but it's definitely not the head.” She tells me, “I think I'm going to have to send you to get an ultrasound to see the positioning of the baby.” We spend a couple of minutes just trying to sink that in. She was like, “But you know what? Let me check again. Maybe I was wrong.” She checked again, and she is still feeling the same things, but then she was like, “Is that your coccyx (the tailbone)?” I thought it was. I genuinely thought it was. I tell her, “Yeah. I think that's it.” We were like, “Okay, I think we should be fine.” We were going a little loopy. I don't know. Fast forward to when my water breaks at 3:00 in the morning, I started feeling contractions, but nothing consistent, so during the day, I just remembered that I texted her. She was like, “What other symptoms do you have?” I had my bloody show. My mucus plug fell out. The contractions were different from the Braxton Hicks that I had been facing all of these weeks. I was like, “Yeah, there's definitely some type of shift here because I feel like they are stronger. They are lasting longer.” Fast forward to Saturday, I ended up walking with my husband. His family was in town, and that also helped pick up the contractions. At around 6:00 PM, I gave her a contraction timer app on my phone so she could see. By the way, I had a doula, so she had the app as well. She was an hour away, and she was like, “Please text me so I can come out on time.” At around 7:00 PM, they both arrived to my home. Contractions were 6 or 7 minutes apart. She had me actually do nipple stimulation with my husband. They went out of the room. We did nipple stimulation, and that just skyrocketed everything because I had all of the oxytocin flowing. Meagan: I was going to say that's natural oxytocin flow right there.Georyana: I had natural oxytocin. I was like, “Whoa. Now I'm in a whole other dimension.” Contractions were 3 minutes apart. I just remember breathing. I had worship music playing in the background. The lighting was dim. It was so different from the hospital. It was so intimate. It was something unforgettable what I experienced on that day and when I compare it to my hospital birth, I had so much tension. All the bright lights, it was so different. She set up the birth pool. I went in, and I sat down. She was like, “Okay. I think it's time to push. You're at a 10.” She had checked me. I was trying to push, but I didn't really get it. I was trying to feel my intuition because they always tell you, “Your body knows when it's going to push.” She had me stand up, and she coached me. She said, “Try standing up and seeing if you have the urge to push.” When I stood up, I got that urge. A contraction came. I did a push, and nothing happened. Then another contraction came, and I did. I just remember breathing in, and I just let it out. She sees knees. Meagan: What? Knees? Georyana: Knees. She sees the baby's knees come out. She screamed. Meagan: What?!Georyana: She was like, “Oh yeah. She's breech. She's breech. She's coming out breech.” Meagan: Oh my goodness. Georyana: I just remember I was moaning during that period. I was just like, “Ooh.” I didn't look at anyone, but my husband tells me that at this moment, I just looked at the doula and she had her jaw on the floor. She was like, “Okay, well, you have to breathe in, and push in during the next contraction.” I remember that during the next contraction, I just let out the biggest roar. It was a roar. She came out entirely. My husband caught her. I just fell. I just fell, and yeah, she was breech. She came out knees first, then her legs, then her whole head just popped out. Meagan: I am dying right now. This is amazing. Oh my gosh. Once her knees came out, her whole body slipped out? Georyana: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Definitely. It was such a moment of shock. Meagan: Yeah, I bet for everybody. Georyana: Yeah, for everyone because we thought she was head down. I kept telling her, “You were right. You were right. What you were feeling was the knees.” She was like, “Thank God I didn't send you to do the ultrasound because you would have gotten a C-section automatically at the hospital. That would have been an automatic C-section.” Meagan: Yeah. They wouldn't have entertained that at all. Georyana: Yeah. He put her on my chest. It was so surreal. I was like, “Wow. My body did this. God really did this to me.” We went on over to the bed. They weighed her. She was 6 pounds and 3 ounces. Meagan: Aw, your tiny little thing. Georyana: Yeah, she was tiny which also helped me. Yeah. Shortly after, I started breastfeeding. With my first, with my son, that was something I really wanted to do, but he never really quite latched so I just pumped for 2 years. For this one, I didn't really expect to breastfeed, I was like, “If it happens, good. If it doesn't, then whatever.” But when she started breastfeeding, I was just like, “Wow, my body is doing this too.” The connection that I just feel with her that I have is just out of this world. That was my experience. Meagan: Wow. Had your midwife done breech before? Georyana: She says that obviously when she was in training with other midwives before she went solo, she had experienced breech births, but this was her first time solo and alone. Technically, she's not allowed to deliver breech babies under law. If she knows, she needs to automatically send me to the hospital. Meagan: But if the baby's knees are coming out, and baby comes out like that, what are you going to do?Georyana: Yeah, exactly. You don't really have any other option than to just deliver the baby.Meagan: Oh my goodness. Wow. That's an amazing story. This is so awesome. Oh my gosh. This postpartum has been much better?Georyana: Yeah, it has. During the first one, like I said, I suffered from anxiety and panic attacks. I didn't really get that this time around. What I got this time around was anger. Meagan: Hmm, okay. So some postpartum rage? Georyana: Yeah, it was rage, and I guess just handling two kids and the transition from one to two hit me hard. I didn't really know how to understand that. But the same thing around, just being able to give myself grace, I had a postpartum session with my midwife and my doula being able to let them know how I felt was very good. It was very helpful. Speaking with my pastor and just letting them know my feelings and how I felt really helped me. It really helped me. I'm doing so much better now. This postpartum has been amazing. A lot of breastfeeding, a lot of cuddles and snuggles. Seeing my son play with his sister was something I always dreamed of, being able to have two kids. Meagan: Oh, what a beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing. Huge congrats. This little ball right here is just stunning. Her head, oh my gosh– her head of hair is just insane. She has so much hair. That is just so much fun, and I'm so happy for you.Georyana: Thank you so much, and thank you for having me. Meagan: Absolutely. 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