180 April's 2VBA3C + Birth After Loss

Today we are joined by our dear friend, April, who is sharing her second VBAC birth story with us after three previous Cesarean births.April had two traumatic, emergency Cesareans for her first two births and a scheduled Cesarean for her third. Her first VBAC was a very heartbreaking yet tender birth to a stillborn at 36 weeks. She shares the many miracles and sweet experiences that led her to her most recent birth-- her second VBAC to a perfectly healthy, beautiful baby girl.Education, great support, trusting her intuition, finding the courage to be unconventional, and asking questions are all big parts of her story. She is a woman of strength in every way. We know her story will inspire you as much as it inspires us! Additional linksThe VBAC Link on Apple PodcastsHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull transcriptNote: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Julie: Welcome, welcome. It is Wednesday and it is podcast Wednesday. I am really excited for today’s story because our interview today is with April. April is actually one of my doula clients and she has-- oh my gosh. We could probably take three or four hours to share the whole story and all of the intricacies of how everything played out in her birth. But we are not. We are going to try to keep it super short. It’s probably going to be a little bit hard for us. So bear with us while we try and keep this story to under an hour and get on there with it. But April has had three C-sections, and then she had a VBAC after three C-sections that was a 36-week stillborn, and then she went on to have another VBAC after three C-sections with a healthy baby girl. That’s when I supported her as a doula for her second VBAC after three C-sections.I really admire April a lot. I am going to talk a little bit, maybe at the end if we have time, about her relationship with her provider and how she created this really cool, mutual respect and dynamic between them. If not, we are going to have to just have another podcast episode about me just telling about the cool things I experienced there. She is just fresh off the VBAC, like just over a month fresh off of her VBAC. It is such an incredible story, but I don’t want to take up too much time sharing about it because I want her to be able to share as much as she can. Review of the WeekJulie: But before we do that, Meagan has a Review of the Week for us.Meagan: Yes I do. This is from holmclaugh90. This is on Apple Podcasts and the title is, “I listen every single day.” It says, “After a traumatic Cesarean with my first baby five years ago and multiple miscarriages in between, this is a breath of fresh air as I await my chance to have a VBAC this October with my second! Love every story I hear on this podcast and it makes me feel so much stronger in knowing I can do this!”And October has passed. This was last July, so if you are still listening, holmclaugh90, send us a message. We would love to hear how it turned out.Julie: Absolutely.April’s storyJulie: All right. We are going to get right into April’s story. Education, good support, listening to your intuition, trusting yourself, being grateful, giving yourself lots of grace, knowing that it’s okay to say “no” and ask questions, these are all big parts of her story. We are just going to let her take it off and then see where this story flows. All right, April. Are you ready?April: I hope so. Yeah. Well, I just want to thank you for the opportunity to be on the podcast and share my story. I hope it will be helpful to at least one person out there. I know that when I found The VBAC Link this past fall actually, at the beginning of this last pregnancy, it was a tremendous resource and I have been telling everybody about it ever since. I’m sure Julie is totally okay with that.Julie: I am totally okay with it.April: But I just can’t even tell you how grateful I am that this resource is out there. I am not paid to say this by any means or anything like that. I ended up hiring Julie as a result of listening to the podcast and actually going to your website. I think I actually did a lot of that through your emails and your blogs probably more than even the podcast, just looking at it and finding specific information for the things that I needed at the time because it can be very overwhelming for those of you that are already on a VBAC journey or wanting to pursue that. Sometimes it’s just a lot of information and depending on what your circumstances are and maybe what your past history and trauma is, there could just be so much and you can go in so many directions. If you’re like me, my brain is really creative and does that on its own anyway, so I was just really grateful for Meagan and Julie and the whole VBAC Link community and team for putting together more bullet-point information where I could find exactly what I needed when I wanted it. So thank you for having me on.Okay. So to get into my story, I already invited Julie and Meagan to interrupt and to help ask questions to keep me on track, but I am going to go over it like a summary first, and then maybe we will just dive into stuff after that. When I was 18, I was pregnant for the first time. I and my husband were expecting our daughter. I really didn’t know. You just don’t know what you don’t know, right? As an 18-year-old who was entering motherhood and really excited and grateful for it but also terrified, it was a big transition in my life at the time too. I just didn’t know a lot about birth in general.I really had a lot of trust in providers who I think are really great people, but I just didn’t know what to ask and I didn’t know how to really prepare for birth other than watching birth story shows and random information like that. Probably not the best resources, guys. Anyway, after a pretty smooth pregnancy, I ended up having an emergency Cesarean with her. Hers was due to a cord being wrapped around her neck which we didn’t know until I got to the pushing phase and her heart rate kept dropping and went so low, and didn’t want to come back up after the third time. And so we were rushed immediately to an emergency Cesarean.During that Cesarean, I am not sure. I actually only found out when we had our stillbirth later. I was actually given extra insight as to what exactly happened during that first birth but apparently, I had possibly some amniotic fluid or something get into my bloodstream and it caused-- I am still not sure if it was a pulmonary embolism or it was some type of embolism. I still need to go and actually find out exactly what happened. But it was a life-threatening situation as a result of that Cesarean. And so not only was it not the birth story I wanted, my daughter thankfully was healthy and okay after being monitored in the NICU for a little bit because she had meconium in her fluid when she was born, but on top of that, I barely got to see her. I got to say “hi” to her and give her a kiss as my husband brought her around from the drape to me. I looked over at my anesthesiologist who was on my other side and I don’t know why but I couldn’t move anything other than my head. I looked at him and was just pleading with my eyes because I, for some reason, couldn’t even do any type of motion or sound or anything.Thankfully, he realized something was wrong and told me that he was going to put me out and I would be okay. The next thing I knew, I woke up and it was six hours later. She was being brought to me in the recovery area, the mother and baby, and I had missed it. I had missed the first six hours of her life and that was really hard for me. That was really traumatic for me. I did not love that. I was grateful at the time and still am that we had the ability to deliver her by Cesarean and whereas that was probably truly necessary for her to be born that way, it was still really traumatic and it was really sad. I was really hoping when I got pregnant with my second that we wouldn’t have to do that again and I would be able to be the first one to hold her-- or to hold him this time. It was my boy. And be able to have those moments together peacefully without the drama around it. I prepared what I thought was preparing for a VBAC. I went and found a different provider and I asked them. That was one of the first things when they ask you, “What do you want and what are your questions and concerns with this pregnancy?” It was, “I would really like to have a VBAC and I will do whatever. Whatever you tell me to do to prepare for that and to hopefully make that successful.” I really wasn’t given any information. It was just kind of like, “Oh, okay. Yeah. Sure. We will just plan on that. Just do what you did before and nothing different.” No further information or education. And again, I just trusted that the providers knew best and didn’t really seek out any extra information on my own.So I went through that whole pregnancy and again, it wasn’t too eventful, and then we got to birth. I went into the hospital and didn’t know, but I know now that it wasn’t the most friendly for VBACs in general. But again, I didn’t know. I was put on an epidural right away even though I didn’t really need one, but they were like, “Well, this is mandatory because you’re a VBAC.” There were a lot of interventions that were given right upfront that I wasn’t really told I had a choice with and I didn’t realize it was okay to say, “I don’t want to do that,” or to ask more questions, or just get more information about it. I just went with the flow because like I said, I just trusted the providers. I knew that I wasn’t a nurse or a doctor and I just figured because they knew that I wanted to have a successful VBAC and was vocal about that, that I assumed everybody was telling me the best advice to get that outcome.So I went and had been laboring really well and progressing really well, and then as soon as I actually got into the hospital and was admitted, with the inventions that they did, my labor started to slow down significantly. It still was progressing but just a lot slower, and then after 17 hours-- so my daughter was 26 hours of labor before a Cesarean and my son was 17 hours. When we got to delivery at the 17-hour mark, we had the opposite happen with his heart rate. So whereas my daughter, when we started to push, her heart rate dropped, my son, they were like, “Okay. He is at a +1 now. Why don’t we--” because I was at a +1, but he had been there for an hour and so they were like, “Maybe we should consider starting to push,” and then just before I actually started to push, his heart rate skyrocketed for no reason that we actually could see.And so they immediately were like, “Baby’s in distress. Something is wrong.” After-- I don’t even know exactly how many minutes because it happened really fast-- they were like, “Okay. We are going in for another Cesarean. We need to get him out right now.” They unhooked me from the epidural and brought me back to the operating room. Before I knew it, he was actually delivered. I wasn’t even numbed because they couldn’t get the epidural going fast enough. It was just really traumatic and really not what I wanted. But again, I was really grateful that my baby was healthy and here, and I survived it, and we still had, eventually, an outcome where both of us were okay and here. But the getting there part was not fun. So anyway. That was my VBAC experience. It was not great and it obviously had failed. So I just thought, “Okay. That’s it.” And then they had made me sign all this paperwork saying, “If it does fail, this is it. You get one chance and then it is Cesareans going forward with any other kids you have.”And so three years later, we decided to have another baby again. I was with a different provider again and I asked them first thing, “Is that still the same rule or can I try for a VBAC” because I had learned more between now and then and I thought maybe I wasn’t given the best option. Now, I know I definitely wasn’t. And so I thought, “You know, maybe I still could do it.” Maybe we could have a better first moment with baby because my son had been taken into the NICU for monitoring as well and because I had not been numbed during the Cesarean, they knocked me out because I went into shock and I was on narcotic medicine for the first little bit, and so I was very in and out of it at the beginning of his life too.I just really again missed that birth story that I was really hoping for, and those bonding moments at the beginning and everything, minus trauma for them and for me. And so I asked this provider with my baby number three, my second son, if we were still looking at the same thing or if we had to just plan on a Cesarean and they told me, “Absolutely not.” There was no choice for me, just because of the emergency Cesareans beforehand, and that I for sure had to schedule a Cesarean. That was it. We weren’t even going to have a discussion about it. I took that for what it was worth and I thought that was it and so I said, “Okay.” I didn’t know anybody that had had any VBACs after more than one Cesarean and so I really thought that that was the end-all and didn’t know any better. And so we had a planned Cesarean with him. It was the weirdest thing going into the hospital and delivering without being in labor. It was actually a beautiful experience. No drama, no unexpected events. I delivered him and they did take him away to give him his first bath right away, so I didn’t quite get the family-centered Cesarean that I think you can do now, but it was still better than it had been. It was very different but it was good. Both of us were safe and healthy and we were good.And then years later, we decided to have our caboose baby, was what we termed it. We got pregnant with our fourth and there was a ten-year gap. The pregnancy went well up until the 20-week mark when we went in for our anatomy scan and we found out that she had a pleural effusion, which I had never heard of before, but it meant that there was fluid in between her chest wall cavity and her lungs. It was on one side. It wasn’t multiple pockets which would have been worse, but there was this pocket of fluid that they didn’t know what it was. They didn’t know what it came from. Of course, I went home and looked up statistics right away. 80% can be lots of scary things and often, not often I should say, but a lot of them don’t end up with good outcomes for babies. And then there is 20% that just magically show up and they magically go away, as the specialist put it.And so it was really scary and stressful from 20 weeks on. We had extra ultrasounds to monitor it and we were just hoping and praying that it went away. They did extra bloodwork tests and stuff. We couldn’t indicate that it meant anything more than just possibly that 20% that just they don’t know why it was there and they don’t know why it goes away, but there wasn’t anything else that showed that it was going to be anything more than that. But we did have to monitor it to just hope that it went away. They were like, “If it’s present at birth, then we can possibly help or leave it then after birth, but in the meantime, we just have to watch it.” So that’s what we were doing. We had a lot of extra eyes on baby and me during the pregnancy. She was due in October 2019. Actually, she was due November 5, 2019. Sorry. She was born in October. So we got to our 32-week mark and had another ultrasound at that point. We had felt really lucky and we discovered that the pleural effusion had completely gone away at that point, so we thought we were the 20% that just got really lucky, and it was gone and it wasn’t a problem anymore. The specialist at that appointment said, “If we didn’t know this had existed in the first place, we wouldn’t be able to see any signs that it ever was there in the first place. So you are safe. You’re in the clear. You are good.” That was 32 weeks and so if baby does come early, we just thought we were “safe”.And so then we went to our 36-week check-up thinking that, we had a month in between that appointment and that one, thinking that all was well and we were finally out of the woods. We were going to have this baby anytime now, and we were all ready, and had the nursery ready, and had all of the things, and we are really excited to be welcoming our little caboose baby to our family. My kids were, the older kids were 10 and-- gosh, I guess they were 10 and 13 and 15. No, probably 14 actually at the time. Oh no, sorry. Just barely 15.Anyway, oh gosh. Now I am messing it up. Something like that, but teenagers basically. Anyway, it was very much a family affair. I went into the 36-week appointment. My husband had been able to go to most of them, but that one he had to work that morning, and so he went 45 minutes away from where I was to go to a job. I went to that appointment thinking that everything was great and we discovered that there was no heartbeat right at the very beginning. It was devastating to say the least. I don’t want to speed over too much but I know in favor of time I need to. So I am just going to sum up with, it was horrible. Child loss is, yeah. I don’t know. I can’t imagine anything worse than it. So yeah. It was crushing. There were no explanations when we found out and then later, at our six-week follow-up appointment, after they had done lots of testing on her and me, we never got any answers so I don’t know what happened or why, but her heart just stopped. It was just crushing in every way. We are religious and spiritual people and none of it flowed with anything that we had felt like we received as far as personal revelation and thinking certain things. It was all just a very confusing and really, really difficult time for all of us. And so that happened and there were miracles that happened out of the tragedy, but it was also hard because it is hard when you’re going through something so tough to say that anything good could come out of it because if given the chance you wouldn’t do the hard part at any moment. You know?But there were some miracles that came out of it immediately and following in the days, and weeks, and months following. One of them was that our doctor was, I am just so grateful for him, our OB. During that appointment, after the initial shock and discussions about what to do next and everything, he did give me the surprise option of attempting to do a VBAC again. That’s where this unexpected VBAC came from with my fourth because he said that really for me, the risks were-- obviously, there was still that uterine rupture risk, but he was like, “The concern is to try and save both of you, and especially the baby if that happens.” So he was like, “I feel comfortable and as the provider--” There was a group of them and so as part of those actually going to be at the hospital if he wasn’t there, he wasn’t going to be there, so the providers at the hospital were comfortable allowing me to try for a VBAC and just doing it very, very slow, and just hoping that it went well. If it didn’t, we would end up doing an emergency Cesarean again, and then the alternative was just to do a Cesarean.My husband wanted, “Let’s just go for a Cesarean again and get the baby out. We have waited this long,” and he was really afraid because of the traumatic birth trying for a VBAC before. He was afraid of what could happen, so he was like, “Let’s just do that and save ourselves any more drama.” And I don’t know-- well, I do know why. The only reason I can say why I felt peace and calm in that moment and why I knew to try for a VBAC again because it was the only option that felt good at the time and felt peaceful. I didn’t have any fear about it which was not like me because I usually overthink everything and have anxiety. So I decided when everything else felt so out of control and not my plan anyway, that if that one felt like the first step in something that didn’t just seem wrong when my world was upside down, then I was going to trust it and just go with what felt right.And so we ended up going into the hospital and they mechanically induced me with a Foley bulb and a Pitocin drip. They were doing it in increments of 2. I’m not sure what they started me on.Meagan: Usually, they do 2 every thirty minutes. A 2 is considered a low dose. 4 is still low but higher. 2 milliliters an hour every thirty minutes.April: Yeah. That’s probably what it was then. I know it was 2 and so if it was every thirty minutes. Yeah, that sounds right. So we did that and then I got an epidural earlier on because my friends were like, “Why?” I had two friends come to visit us there in the hospital and they were just like-- at first, I wasn’t getting the epidural and they were just like, “You’re already going through so much pain. Why put yourself in any more physical pain on top of that? Let yourself take the edge off with an epidural and let yourself really focus on preparing to meet your baby and for the very few hours that you will have together.” You know, in preparation of that, and everything that was happening, and the loss, and everything.So I did. I got the epidural and it was fine. We ended up after 43 hours, several days, we got our miracle. She was born vaginally and I only pushed for 15 minutes. It was beautiful and crazy. I did stall for quite a bit which was why it was 43 hours just because it was really slow progress from the entire second day, basically. But we had a lot of people praying for us, and we had priesthood blessings and other things, and finally, I actually took a nap which, I wasn’t really getting much sleep even at night because of the circumstances. It was difficult to sleep or to do anything really other than cry. And right before I delivered her, I actually was finally able to take a nap. I got a one-hour rest and when I woke up, my body had finally dilated fully. I was already fully effaced the whole time. But I finally dilated to a 10 and they were able to start pushing. And like I said, we pushed for 15 minutes and she was born. It was amazing. I literally had zero prep for a VBAC other than what I had done the 12-13 years before when I actually tried for a VBAC. And so it was truly, in my opinion, by the grace of God that it happened. And here we found ourselves in that terrible circumstance but also a miracle because we didn’t ever think we would have that experience. It was really awful and really beautiful at the same time because we were able to have what we never thought we would be able to and we were able to share those moments with our kids and with our newborn daughter who, even though was deceased, we were able to really spend a lot of time with her immediately after. It was all very sacred. There’s a lot of words that just don’t describe it, but just really sacred.So that was our fourth birth and then this last time, we actually knew before we even went in to deliver that our fourth baby, our stillbirth baby at 36 weeks-- after the appointment, my husband, I called him because like I said, he had been at a job that was 45 minutes away from where we were and had to tell him the news over the phone. He raced to where I was and met us there because we were there for a couple of hours before we went home to prepare to go to the hospital to deliver. And when he met me there, we were talking things over with the doctor and our doctor told us, he was like, “I know that you’re not even thinking--” because I was supposed to actually be done.We were planning the fourth and then I was supposed to have my tubes tied and everything because it was supposed to be another planned Cesarean, and so we were totally done and very mentally and emotionally content and prepared to be done having kids. And then when that curveball happened, everything was upside down. There was no discussion or forethought into any decisions past that. And so our doctor told us, “I know you haven’t even thought about this and you don’t have to make any decision or think about this right now per se, but I just want you to know that I would be willing to do a fifth Cesarean on you if you would like to try again for another child,” because before that, we had discussed that four was really the safest number for me for Cesareans, and so I really should be done after four. That was part of that decision to be done.So anyway, the last thing on my mind during birth for our stillbirth daughter was to get pregnant again and to go through that again. Obviously, now with fear of, “What if this happens again?” and not even knowing why and everything, but after we lost her and spent a lot of time really, really getting close to God about a lot of things, we really felt strongly by the time that we even gave birth to her that we probably would try again. It didn’t make any logical sense other than it just was like I said. When so much of my world felt wrong, it was only one thing, and sometimes here and there, just something that would feel right and peaceful. That was one thing that did.And so after we delivered her and we had our funeral and everything, we started having really strong feelings that-- this is going to sound really cray cray, at least it did to me, but my husband and I both started to have really strong feelings that the same little girl that we had lost really still wanted to be a part of our family and that if we were to get pregnant again, that she would come back to us.Meagan: Oh, that just gave me the chills.April: Yeah. It’s something that honestly, my husband and I had never, ever considered. We have had friends that have lost babies. Miscarriage and infant loss is not talked about as often as it probably really needs to be and should be, but one out of four women experience loss and that’s something that I didn’t know before. It’s really prominent. I don’t know how often this part of our story happens to others. I have no idea why it did for us other than I am just really grateful. I don’t think it has anything to do with-- I don’t know.I laugh and I am like, “There are so much better people that, I think, probably deserve a miracle like that.” But it did for us. And the farther in after our loss, it was really hard too because we had a lot of support with the people that-- we didn’t just share it with anybody. It was really sacred and personal to us and when we did share it, we had-- most people were actually very open and supportive of it, and then occasionally, we would get somebody who was just really worried about us because you know, you love somebody and you don’t want them to suppress their grief.They were really worried, I think, that we were going to go off the deep end, and in our grief, we were thinking that our dead daughter was going to come back in another body, and we wouldn’t grieve that baby, and we would think the new baby was the other baby. Something like that and there was just concern, right? It was really such a, just a crazy-- in a good way. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but a really wild experience.During all of this time, we did decide to go ahead and get pregnant. I actually did this whole detox with the doctor to physically try to prepare as well as I could and do all these things in preparation for it, and at the same time, we were doing a lot of spiritual digging just personally, and as a couple, and as a family. We really got good at really getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, with letting other people being uncomfortable if they had-- I don’t know how to put this. Like, if somebody didn’t necessarily understand or support what we really felt and knew to be right for us, that it was okay.It wasn’t our job to make ourselves uncomfortable or to tell a lie to make them feel comfortable. Does that make sense? And if so, we were like, “Okay.” And for me, I just tried to see everybody as coming from a place of love. You know, just like with our loss. Sometimes, people don’t say the most helpful things to you after you have lost because they want so badly to help you but they don’t know how and sometimes, what they say can be really hurtful and not helpful.And so I started labeling things from that experience as not “good or bad”, but just “helpful and unhelpful”. I used that as I was preparing for this pregnancy and knowing that I wanted to try to do a VBAC again because we had been able to successfully do it, and now I knew that my body could do it and having that experience, I just knew that that was what we wanted and we could do it again. I felt really good about it again, for no necessarily logical explanation, I just knew that it was possible and that I should look into it more, and not just take everything that was given to me information-wise from a provider or whatever at just surface value. I should just ask questions, and look into it, and follow that intuition.We were getting really good at that on every level, including spiritual, with what we felt was happening with our daughter coming back and in preparing for that. And so we decided to stay with our same provider because he had been there. Even though he wasn’t there at the delivery, he had been there through the whole pregnancy and on the day of finding out the news and everything. He had been really awesome. And so we just felt like there were a lot of miracles during the whole time between our provider, and with the hospital, and where we delivered which we loved. Shout out to Timpanogos hospital.But we really just felt okay. God was really there in so many tiny, tiny details. Things that were really personal to us that you couldn’t overlook. A lot of it, for me-- I know Julie is kind of the same way. We talked about this. But in the past, I tended to find comfort in statistics and in concrete evidence, case studies. The nerd in me loves to comfort myself with the-- things that would make me more anxious about stuff, I would go and look for numbers. I would look for concrete evidence. I would look for the other in my favor. You know, that kind of stuff. My logic brain would turn on and that’s where I would find my comfort.When we lost our daughter, I couldn’t go there anymore because we were the less than 1% of stillbirths and when I looked to statistics, the statistics were painful to see that stillbirths hadn’t really improved over the last many, many years. Just to see all of these statistics not only didn’t bring me comfort, but we’re hurtful. They didn’t give me any kind of logic. They actually made me more upset and, I hate using the word crazy, but that’s what they did. They drove me nuts because nothing about it was logical. It all was just in one, giant, lightning-bolt fluke.And so that was, for me, more upsetting than anything. So I was walking this very personal, you could call it spiritual. You could call it learning to really be one with your own intuition, your gut instincts. You can call it a lot of things, but that’s what I had to do this entire last pregnancy. I couldn’t look to the numbers anymore just for comfort. I still would look at them, and then I would look to God and I would look to myself, and I would say, “Okay. Does it feel good? Does it feel right? Or does it feel like something is wrong? Do I feel like maybe I need to ask more questions or maybe there is more to that or maybe that is actually not correct information?” And so every doctor’s appointment, my OB was aware of what I wanted to do in getting pregnant again and trying for a VBAC. From appointment number one, we discussed it and we were vocal about what we wanted. We tried to get as much support as we could from a really great provider and group, but not the most VBAC supportive as we didn’t really know that upfront, but as we got toward the end of the pregnancy, and preparing for delivery, and during delivery actually, as Julie can attest. There was a lot of discussion about uterine rupture and everything. Basically, they talked about it leading up to delivery and our choices with that were put on the line again during delivery. We had to have all those discussions again while I was actually in labor. But it was really neat because it was all just practice to be ready and to be able to say, “Okay. This is what feels right and that doesn’t feel right.” It’s okay to say “yes” when it does and it’s okay to say “no” when it doesn’t. You know? Or to ask more questions, and have discussions, and to respectfully disagree with a provider but still have that love and care for each other and realize that we all want the same thing, but we just may not agree on how to get there.Julie: Yeah.April: And so we went into labor this last time, and they were really getting pushy, I will say, the entire last month of my weekly appointments and actually at the weekly appointments, but I also had NSTs, so I was actually getting it double because my NST tech would sometimes discuss, “Have they talked about your induction date yet? Are you doing a Cesarean this time?” And all of the stuff anyway.  It was actually funny, but Julie can tell you because we ended up hiring Julie actually very late in the game. Julie can say. I can’t remember exactly how far along I was. I want to say I was 30--Julie: I think it was around 32 weeks. 30, 32.April: Yeah. 32 or 34 weeks or something. Thirty-something like that and I had wanted to earlier on but I wasn’t sure with COVID and everything if she would be allowed in the room and with our loss before, I was like, “If I only get one person in that room with me, it’s going to be my husband.” And so when I found out I could have two people there physically with me, I was like, “Okay. I really think we need that other person so that when I am laboring, I don’t have to have all the discussions again and if they try to railroad me, I don’t have to exactly be 100% with all my facts and logic.” Do you know what I mean? Or having these long conversations, but I can focus on what I need to do and I can let my husband and my doula assist me in birthing positions and all the things that I need to help make it successful as well as having those educated conversations on the side with me and with providers.I just felt like I really needed that extra person in our corner. I had really never even known what a doula was until this pregnancy. So it was really a lot of new stuff for us, but I had been reading a lot of birthing books this time. I had done so much research with your guys’ website and with other resources out there on what had even happened to my past births and, in preparation for this birth, just options, and learning to ask all the questions and not be afraid to find out the answers, and then to ask more questions. And so anyway, we did. We had Julie with us and I am so grateful. I don’t think we actually would have been a successful VBAC had Julie not been there. And not just Julie, but Meagan, I know you behind the scenes and others from The VBAC Link community--Julie: Yeah. There were a lot of people cheering you on.April: I know that we had a lot of people cheering us on and helping when we needed to. We stalled during labor. I know that we had a lot of help with suggestions of different positions to try to help her progress because she got stuck. We almost did the failure-to-progress at six hours when we thought we were about ready to push. I was 95% effaced and we were just before lunch. It was 11:15 or something like that. Julie, do you remember?Julie: Yeah. You were at 9 centimeters for six hours.April: Yeah. yeah.Julie: It was at the six-hour check. Baby moved down just one station. Just enough for them to let you keep going. Just enough.April: Yeah, just enough. It was so awesome. Just enough which was awesome. And so anyway, we did that and I’ve got to say again, God showed up big time because we literally sent out a text to friends and that entire last 45 minutes, Julie had felt really inspired to change up our plan of what positions we were going to do for this special circuit that worked out perfectly timing-wise. My husband gave me a priesthood blessing and literally during that blessing, which it’s, just to say for those who don’t know, it is a very personal, specific prayer with added authority. And anyway, during that, we heard her on the monitor totally move which, we hadn’t heard movement like that for a long time.Julie: You could literally hear her moving down and into position on the monitor during the blessing.April: It was so cool.Julie: It was the coolest.April: It was amazing. We knew that there were tons of people praying for us at that moment. So it’s just so cool and I swear that’s how we were successful last time too amongst all the other things. But yeah. And so we got to that part and sure enough, the doctor came in, and it was a doctor who had just got back on shift for the night shift again. We had actually gotten into the hospital the night before, and so it was the same doctor that we had the first conversation with when we went in. Julie and I think he was just the right doctor and she was waiting for him to get there because as soon as he got there, she moved and he checked again, and we were finally ready.He was like, “Okay.” First, he said he was going to help move her. How did he phrase it?Julie: He said he was going to try to turn her head because she was coming down a little asynclitic.April: Yeah. He was like, “I won’t use forceps or anything. If you are okay with it, I will just reach up there and try to assist her because she is mid-spin. But I think if I can assist her with this little leftover cervical lip--” which was just a tiny bit. He said, “If I can help her get past that, then I think she will be ready and then we can start pushing.” And just before he did that, Julie was shocked. She told me this has never happened, but he got this look on his face and he said, “You know? Actually, would you be willing to push? Let’s just see what happens. Could you just give me a push and we will see?”Julie: Like, push through the lip. No providers ever say that. They don’t say like, “Just start to push a little.” As doulas we are like, “Can she just push a little bit? It will probably push it away.” Meagan, do you hear that? It was just so crazy to me.Meagan: Yeah. I hear it. The hard thing is, sometimes it is so stretchy that a little extra oomph will have the cervix slip over and then sometimes it goes the opposite way and it actually swells because you are pushing against a cervix that is not ready to stretch.Julie: Yeah. That’s true. Yeah.Meagan: And so once in a while, a provider will say, “Hey, can you just give me a little push, and then I will feel it. And then I will be like, ‘Oh it reduced and it stayed,’” but if it reduces and then it comes back, the cervix is not ready. So continuing to push isn’t usually the best idea. But for you, it worked. Yeah.Julie: Yeah.April: Wow, interesting. Yeah. It totally worked. And so yeah. He literally said that and we were like, “Okay. Yeah. We tried it and then he was like-- what did he say? “Oh yeah. We are ready. Okay.”Julie: Oh yep. Cervix is gone. Keep pushing.April: Okay. We need to push. We’re going to start pushing. And then they had already pretty much prepped the room hours before. But yeah. Then there was a little bit of extra commotion and he was like, “Okay, let’s start pushing-pushing. It’s time.” We only pushed for about 20 minutes and then he gave her a good pull at the end there. I was really hoping he wouldn’t pull on her and that did cause a little bit-- she had a tiny bit of shoulder dystocia right at the very end. It almost wasn’t even enough to call it shoulder dystocia but enough that he did give her a little bit of a pull at the end which was not part of my birth plan, but I don’t know that he read it even though I did. I had it all printed out and everything, but I don’t know if he saw that. But he did pull on her and we had to have a little bit of bodywork done on her afterward because it did injure a muscle in between her neck and her shoulder. But she is okay now. It’s all good. But yeah. We pushed for 20 minutes. He assisted in pulling her out, and she was born and was healthy, and it was great. And for the first time ever, other than with my stillbirth, we didn’t have to have her whisked away. Actually, even with our stillbirth, they did still have to take her, and clean up, and do some things before we got to spend time with her directly.This time, she was born and they brought her right up to me, and my husband cut the cord, and I bawled like a baby. You’ll see that in the picture that I picked for my story. We both did. It was just awesome. Yeah. It was just a really beautiful experience and the recovery for both of us has been so much better. She, like I said, had a little bit of bodywork that needed to be done, but that was still pretty minor considering all things, and yeah. She’s been thriving. Our breastfeeding experience post-birth has been actually amazing. I’ve always had issues with that afterward.I talked to the lactation specialist we hired. Gosh, I can’t even remember the abbreviation. It’s like, IBCLC or something like that, right?Julie: Yeah.April: Anyway, we hired one of those to come and actually help us in that first week after birth and I was talking about everything with her and the other births. I’ve always had problems with drying up at five weeks, my milk, for just no reason. I did this crazy feeding and pumping, and that’s all I would do, a routine and everything but no matter what, I would always dry up around five weeks. I am happy to say that I am at five weeks now and we have tons-- well, not tons of milk. We are still working on getting more, but we have way more milk than I have ever had before.I was just talking to her about the difference and if Cesareans affect that. She had worked in a hospital for a long, long time before she actually decided to go solo and do her consulting individually, and she said that there was totally a correlation with that in her opinion from what she had seen professionally and really had helped. So I just thought that was a really cool added benefit that I was like, “No. I don’t know if that was part of why we needed to do a VBAC this time too.” I’m not sure what all the reasons are. I feel like they just keep coming, but I feel like that’s what this baby needed. It was a really beautiful experience for us and recovery afterward has been night-and-day different I will say.Some people will say a Cesarean recovery isn’t that bad. I will not say that it is the worst thing ever but I will beg to differ. Between a VBAC recovery, and a Cesarean, or vaginal birth, I would definitely go with a VBAC for moms. I did get one stitch this time. I am proud of my one stitch.Meagan: That’s really good.April: That’s nothing. I know. Yeah. I know that there are people that have it way, way worse. So anyway. Every birth is beautiful. I totally think it’s just really amazing and always very grateful for everybody’s happy outcome. But I do think it’s important to go with what you feel is right for you and your baby, and sometimes that’s going to look different for each baby. Each pregnancy is not the same. But for us, I’m really glad that we finally did say “yes” to the things like hiring a doula, finding out what a doula was, finding The VBAC Link.Julie: Yay.April: Hiring Julie and really felt a strong-- even picking Julie out actually was an awesome spiritual thing for us too because here was this stranger that I didn’t even know was in my state let alone not too far for me doing this VBAC Link that I just randomly found when I was looking up VBAC stuff. I had even emailed her which I didn’t even realize that I forgot I had done. When I did go to hire her, she was like, “Oh yeah. You emailed me months ago.” I was like, “I did?” I just knew that Julie was the doula that I needed because not every doula is the same. I think they probably are all amazing but you have got to find the people that are the right fit for you for your team and for your journey, and we did. We are just really grateful that it all worked out.Julie: Yeah. It was a beautiful birth. Beautiful story.Meagan: So, so happy for you.Julie: So many spiritual and amazing experiences happened with the providers and just everything. It was just a really sacred thing and it was an honor to be a part of it. I appreciate you letting me into that space and I appreciate you sharing your story with all of us today.April: Yeah. Thanks for having me on.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