Episode 196 Brenda's VBAC + D-MER and Postpartum

“Once I knew what it was, that helped. It’s a physiological thing. There’s nothing actually wrong with me. My experience with it was pretty extreme. Our bodies are so amazing and they serve us so well, but there are differences for everybody.”Brenda’s six births include a medicated hospital birth, a crash Cesarean, an unmedicated VBAC, an HBAC, an emergency C-section, and a gentle, planned Cesarean. Her stories are wildly different but all inspiring in their own ways!Brenda also gets raw and vulnerable with us as she shares her intense postpartum experiences with Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex (D-MER). Her choice to fight for healing in a positive way has helped her come out of the fog every time.Have you experienced D-MER?Additional linksThe VBAC Link Blog: How to Plan for a Natural Family-Centered CesareanThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull transcriptNote: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Meagan: Hello, hello everybody. Welcome to The VBAC Link podcast. This is Meagan, your host, which is so weird to say that it’s just me by myself. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get used to that, but here I am and I’m still so excited to be with you. We have an awesome episode today. We have our friend, Brenda, and she has a lot of stories to tell you. I am so excited to learn more about all of her birth journeys. She is a mom of six and has had a mixture of vaginal, unmedicated, medicated, home birth, VBAC, and planned Cesarean. All of the things, so we are so excited to dive into her stories today. Review of the WeekMeagan: As usual, we always have a Review of the Week and I am going to be reading that for you today. This is from a mama in Australia. I don’t even know how to actually how to say her username. It’s awesomebarbie. Sorry if I’m botching that, love. Her topic says, “Two angels sent from above.” It says, “Hey, ladies. I’m from Sydney, Australia and I’ve been a silent fan for months now. Ever since having my C-section on November 19th, I have been obsessed with achieving a vaginal birth. Luckily for me, I fell pregnant on July 20th and I’m currently 33 weeks.”“Listening to your podcast has encouraged me to be strong-minded and educated me so much. It has taught me how to self-advocate and stand up for my body. Thank you, guys. I am going for my VBAC in late March. You guys won’t need to stalk me because I will write you guys either way.”I love that because we do. We stalk you guys. “I hope to be on your show soon. Love, Wendy. Sydney, Australia.” It’s so funny because when we read reviews from the past, we do. We love to go back into The VBAC Link Community on our Facebook group and see if they have posted and what the outcome was. So thank you so much, Wendy. We love you back and we are so glad that you have been with us. Brenda’s StoryMeagan: Okay. We are going to turn the time over to Brenda. Before we do, I want to just give you a little sneak peek of what we’ve got for the little bit in the end. There’s my son in the background. So like I said in the beginning, she’s had six kiddos and something that we want to talk about at the end is gentle Cesareans. This is something that I personally had as well with my second C-section and it made all the world of a difference in my experience. And then we also wanted to talk about D-Mer. Hang in and listen to this amazing story and at the end, hang in there because we want to talk about D-Mer a little more. Okay, cute Brenda, are you ready for this? Brenda: I’m ready. Meagan: All right. Well, I will turn the time over to you. Brenda: Okay. So yeah. I’m super excited to talk. I mean, who doesn’t love talking about their children’s births? And so I guess I’m just going to run through. Like you said, I have six kids and each birth has been totally different. My first was over the estimated due date. I kind of went into labor, but I was not progressing very quickly. I basically was induced because they gave me Pitocin. So that one–Meagan: Spontaneous, but induced. Brenda: Yeah and I was a first-time mom. I had been in early labor for two days. I was exhausted. So yeah. 3 centimeters and I was pretty much panicking with the pain. I got an epidural which actually, I think, helped me relax. There were some complications with him. He had aspirated meconium so he had to leave for– I don’t know. I don’t remember how long, but it was fairly uneventful. For my second birth, there are 18 months between the two boys. I went in to be induced because I was worried about him being over and aspirating meconium, so I was like, “Okay, from this experience, I’m going to do this with the next one.” I was still not super informed really about anything. So I went in to be induced. Everything was going really well. I think right around 6 centimeters, his heart rate started crashing. That happened multiple times, so they took me back and put me under general which was really scary. It was really, really scary. I remember looking up at the nurse who was next to me. I just remember looking at her just like, “Can you please pray for me? I am so scared right now.” And yeah. Then I woke up. My first memory was that I was holding this baby. We didn’t know the gender so I was like, “Oh, is this a boy or a girl?” It was just that you are thankful for it and you are thankful for everything turning out okay, but after that experience, I was really disappointed with it. I was really disappointed that I had this experience. It was traumatic and I had mild postpartum depression after I had my son, Lincoln.And so after that, I was like, “Okay. There has to be something better than this.” I did not like that. And so I started down the road of, “How can I have a better birth?” I completely nerded out on everything. I got pregnant with my third and was just, I mean, I read all of the books. Ina May, I watched all of the movies. I was just like, “I really, really want to have a VBAC.” I got a doula. I started doing all of the things I could do to prepare for that. I went into labor. I think it was five days after my estimated due date. I tried to stay at home as long as possible. I went to the hospital and I was already 8 centimeters. Meagan: Oh!Brenda: I remember tears streaming down my face because I was like, “I think it’s going to happen. I think it’s going to happen.” And an hour and a half later, I had my third son. It was seriously the best day of my life. It was my birthday. Meagan: Aww. Brenda: Yeah. The sun was shining through the window. It was so cool and peaceful in the room. The doctor came in and he just sat at the end of the bed. I just had my baby. It was perfect. It was amazing. It was the best day of my life, one of the best days of my life. Obviously, the satisfaction of having a natural childbirth and just, “Okay. I did it.” It was empowering. Also, just the recovery, everything was so much easier, and yeah. I mean, it was awesome. I was super thankful for that. And so then when I got pregnant with my fourth son, I really was like, “You know what? That went so well.” We lived right across the street from the hospital where I had all of my kids. So I was telling my husband at the time, “Maybe we should just have a home birth.” And so I started looking into that. We had some really difficult things going on at that time and just really liked the idea of having more privacy in our home too. So I found a midwife and I went into labor. I think I was nine days over. It was kind of funny because she would check on me and I just was totally not communicating. She would be like, “How are you doing?” Because I had told her that I had started having contractions. She ended up showing up at my house and was like, “We just felt like we needed to come to check on you.” And so I ended up being 6 centimeters when she came. At that point, it was just really chill. We just hung out. I was washing my dishes and making them coffee. It was very relaxing and just, I don’t know. It was like, “I just don’t even feel like I’m in labor because this is so chill.”Meagan: So chill. That’s awesome. Brenda: Yeah. I wasn’t even in a lot of pain and it was just really awesome. I really wanted to have him in my tub, so I did go in the tub for a little bit and at that point, my contractions were getting quite a bit stronger. I was pretty tired. There was a lot of emotional stuff going on in my life at that time and I was just kind of checked out. My midwife came into the bathroom because, at that point, she kind of just stood back and let me do my thing. She checked me and I was 9.5 with a lip. She was like, “All right. Well, you have a little bit of a lip left. You can try to push a little bit, but if it doesn’t take care of it, you can stop and wait it out.” So I tried to do that for a little while and I got to the point where I was just like, “I’m done. What other option do we have?”I ended up getting out and going into my bedroom. She manually stretched my cervix while I was pushing which was extremely painful. It was probably the most difficult thing I had experienced during childbirth and very different from my VBAC in the hospital. It was obviously a really great experience and it ended up being fine. The delivery was fairly easy, I guess. I never had any tearing during any of my births. Two of my kids were over 9 pounds, and so my recovery and just the pushing had been really pretty easy for me which I am thankful for. So overall, besides the cervix stretching, it was a really good experience. So then fast forward five years. During that five years, I had gotten divorced and remarried. I had four boys and I then was pregnant with my first child, Ruby, with my husband. I was super excited to be having a girl after four boys. I was planning to VBAC. I mean, I had just assumed that’s what would happen. My provider was really supportive. I did have a little bit of hesitation because I knew that I had scarring on my cervix. It had torn when I had my son with the HBAC, and so I was feeling a little bit like, “Is that going to create issues with the delivery?” because I was reading into that and trying to learn all of the things about breaking down scar tissue. But I figured, “Well, I’ll just try, and whatever happens happens.” I think I was about four days past due. I had been having contractions for a few days. I remember being in the kitchen a couple of days before I had her and I had to stop doing what I was doing because of my abdomen. I had a contraction and it just was really painful which was really bizarre to me because it came out of nowhere. I just kept going and they went away. For the next couple of days, I had really low energy. I’m like, “Well, yeah. I’m having a baby. This is common. You can get flu-like symptoms and clean out and all of this stuff.” And so, yeah. Four days after my estimated due date, I just didn’t feel good. I felt flu-like symptoms but again, I thought, “Well, I am having a baby.” My husband and my parents were over and they were telling me, “You don’t look very well. Do you not feel good?” And I’m like, “Well no, but I’m super tired. I’m not sleeping.” I forgot to mention that I also was very sick with the majority of my pregnancies, so horrible indigestion. Throwing up all of the time, just coming out of both ends all of the time, so I wasn’t in the healthiest spot, but I was like, “Yeah. I’m really tired and I don’t feel good, but whatever.” So I lay down and the only time I’ve ever taken a nap in all of my pregnancies was this time. I fell asleep on my bed for over an hour and a half which was so crazy. I woke up and my husband was like, “I really think that we should take your temperature because you are acting funny,” which is another thing. I hallucinate when I have a fever and get super weird. I was like, “Okay, whatever.” So he took my temperature and I was running a fever. I was like, “Well, I’m fine. I’m just really tired.” He was like, “No. I really think that we should go to the hospital.” And at that point, my sisters were involved. They don’t live in the area, but they were involved and they were all side-texting him like, “Brenda needs to go to the hospital. Brenda needs to go to the hospital. This is making us nervous.” I definitely was declining rapidly. I did not feel well at well. I couldn’t really walk. My abdomen just hurt really, really bad. Meagan: That’s so scary. Brenda: It was really weird, but I still was just like, “Whatever. I just am really tired.” They finally convinced me to go to the hospital so I’m like, “Fine. I’ll just go there and get some medicine and then I need to get better so I can have a baby.” So it’s thirty minutes from our house to the hospital. From the time we left to the time we got to the hospital, I was a complete mess. Any time my husband would go over any bump or anything, I just was in so much pain. My abdomen hurt so bad. I can’t really even describe the feeling, but it was so painful. I remember getting there and I was so mad at him because I was thinking, “Why are you going over these potholes? This is so painful.” And I was thinking like, “I’ve had four children. What is going on? This is really weird. I should be able to handle this and I’m not handling this.” So we get into the emergency room and by this time, I’m shivering. It’s summer in Minnesota, so it was probably 90 degrees and humid. I was in black leggings and a sweatshirt and I was freezing. So we get in there and the ER lady was like, “Are you here for labor and delivery?” And I was like, “No. I’m not.” I’m here. I need to see a doctor because I need some medicine. I was super belligerent. I’m not that way. I’m a very passive, quiet person, but I was basically almost yelling at anyone I came into contact with, which, I don’t really remember any of this. They wanted to put me in a wheelchair and I refused. I wanted to walk up the stairs. I was just being really weird and totally out of character. And so we got up to labor and delivery and they said, “Yeah. You’re running a fever and we are going to give you some fluids. We’ll admit you because eventually, you’ll have your baby, but we know you want to have a VBAC so we will just take it slow.” Over the course of, I think it was maybe twenty minutes, they were trying to put an IV in which was not working, I guess. It was another thing I don’t really remember. It made me realize how out of it I was because I guess they had multiple people come in and try to put my IV in. There was blood everywhere and I don’t remember any of it. And so they came in and they were like, “We are going to do a rectal just to get a more accurate read,” and my internal temperature was pushing 107. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Brenda: Yeah. I was exhibiting other signs of sepsis. The doctor came in. I was going into septic shock, so they brought me back and did a C-section. It was a really crazy thing. She ended up being– they did come in. I don’t remember this either, but they told my husband, “We don’t really know what the outcome could be because this is really serious.”It was scary for him, but he did great. He was awesome. I was completely out of it and saying really weird things because of all of the medication I was given. He was just really great and everything turned out fine. She was healthy and as soon as I was cleaned out– my uterus was completely full of green fluid which makes sense about the pain. It was completely infected. Everything was just infected. And so they actually washed me out which was really weird, but as soon as I got back to the room, within probably several hours, I was completely back as far as temperature-wise. My color had returned. When the doctor came in, he was like, “I don’t even recognize you from the person that came in.”It just was really crazy how one, how quickly things can change, and then two, just how little control we have in those circumstances. I had no control over anything and it was completely different than my previous experiences. I was not expecting to have a C-section because I was septic. I had never even heard of that before. I felt like my recovery with that was fine. I don’t think anyone enjoys recovering from a C-section, but I had a really great support system and my husband is really helpful and hands-on, so I felt like it went well. I felt like the postpartum period was good. I don’t know. It just seemed like she entered our family and it was awesome. It was super awesome. I didn’t feel like I was impacted much by her birth as far as being traumatized or anything so that was great. So then I got pregnant again. There are about two years in between Ruby and her sister. Her younger sister, Bridget. And so I always thought, I hadn’t heard too much about a VBAC after two Cesareans but it was definitely something I was interested in. As I started looking around and trying to find a provider that would support that, it was pretty much like hitting dead ends everywhere. Oh, and it was during COVID. There was a birth center in Minneapolis that would normally do it but because of COVID, they weren’t able to do any VBACs. If you were a VBAC, you would have to go to the hospital that they worked with. COVID had put a ton of restrictions on that, so that was out. And so I ended up finding a provider who was an hour and a half away and she was amazing. She was so reassuring and so positive that this was something I could do. And so from probably four months to eight months, I was seeing her and making the drive. I would go to the appointments and feel really positive about it. I felt really positive. I felt, “Yes, I can do this. This is amazing. I’m going to have a–” my plan was to have the VBAC and I could do a water birth at their center. I could basically deliver my own baby. I was thinking, “I’m going to have a VBAC after two Cesareans and it’s going to be amazing and this is going to be the grand finale of all of my birthing experiences.” I thought, “Well, why not? Because I have had VBACs. I know I can do it.”And then I would leave and just start feeling uneasy again which I know can happen and I’ve heard other stories, listening to other birth stories like, yeah, you doubt and then you go back and you feel like, “Okay. I can do this. I can do this.” So I basically was on that rollercoaster my whole pregnancy and wasn’t really seeing her very much because of COVID, like, minimal visits or whatever. And so I think it was 35 weeks, 36 weeks. I went to an appointment. It was fine. I left and I just had this horrible, uneasy feeling in my chest. I looked at my husband and I’m like, “I shouldn’t do this.” He’s like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “This is not the right choice for this baby.” And he was like, “What are you talking about? This is what you want. We’re doing this. You can do it.” And I just was like, “No. This is not the right choice and we need to change our plan.” I just started crying and he was trying to be helpful like, “Okay, are these hormones? Is this where we need to have another pep talk with our midwife? What’s going on? How can I help you?” But it was just this feeling, that mom instinct like, “I need to do something different.” And so I called the OBGYN that I had with Ruby and I just asked if I could come in. So I went in and I just told her everything I was feeling. She was so amazing and so supportive and just tried to even still give me options on having a VBAC after two Cesareans. She couldn’t do it, but she could try to find other options. But at that point, I just felt so strongly that I needed to have a scheduled Cesarean that I just was like, “You know what? No. I appreciate you and advocating for me, but this is what I want to do. I know that this is the right choice,” which was very weird to get to the place of accepting that, but I felt total peace about it. She actually started talking to me about the gentle Cesarean and basically said, “These are the things that I can do,” so that was really cool to be able to have a say in that. She was awesome. She pulled Bridget out very gently to help mimic coming out of the birth canal and to try to squeeze the fluids out. She delayed the clamping as long as she could. They put Bridget on my chest right away and so overall, it was a completely different experience than what I had with my other C-sections, obviously. Obviously, I would have wanted to have a VBAC, but it just was very peaceful. I felt respected and I just felt very peaceful knowing it was the right choice for that. And so, yeah. Those were all of my births. I guess the next thing would be postpartum. D-MER and PostpartumMeagan: Yeah. I want to just say, way to go following that intuition. We talk about it all the time here on this podcast and it’s something that is so hard to sometimes understand and decipher whether it’s just fear or if it’s truly intuition. Your husband was like, “Wait. No, no, no, no. This is not what you want.” And you were like, “No. It’s not necessarily what I want. It’s what I feel is right.” And it’s so hard. I think it was Julie or somebody who told me a long time ago and I swear by this because I’ve tuned in. It’s something that’s this weird thing. This intuition will not place fear. I don’t know how to explain it. Intuition will not be fearful. It’s just factual, right? It’s, “This is what I should do,” but it’s not fear.Brenda: Yeah, yeah. Meagan: It’s hard to decipher through that, but yeah. So let’s talk about postpartum. Let’s talk more about your postpartum journey. Brenda: Yeah, so after I had Bridget, I definitely struggled more and basically went through this period of spiraling into this what I now understand as postpartum psychosis which was really scary because I had no idea what was going on, but I essentially became unsafe. I couldn’t drive because I would want to run into traffic or I couldn’t be left alone with my kids. I couldn’t shower. I was completely debilitated and it was really, really scary. And so I had that happen. Thankfully, I have a really amazing support system that rallied around me and I was able to get help, counseling, medication, and family support fairly quickly which helped me get out of that initial psychosis but then shortly after that, my dad passed away from COVID. He had actually come out to help me. He and my mom had come out to help me with my postpartum and then he got COVID and died. So that was really, really hard and threw a wrench in everything because then it was like, “Okay. Well, now I’m grieving, but also, I’m not really stable.” And so that’s been my journey for the last year is trying to come out of that. It was a combination of help, asking for help, counseling, and changing medication which is another thing. I’ve never been on medication. I don’t take stuff. I’m very pretty naturally minded, so that was a really humbling experience like, “I need help,” and “Why doesn’t anyone talk about this? What is going on with me?” So I feel like now, I am coming out of the fog but it’s been a really, really long journey that can be connected with the D-MER which, if you people don’t know, it’s Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex. I’ve had it with all of my kids starting with my first. My family doctor was the one who first introduced me to D-MER because I told them about the feelings that I was having. He had told me, “Yeah. It’s this condition not talked about, but it’s basically the dopamine is inaccurate. Whatever is being released, there is a glitch.” D-MER can vary for women, but in my case, it was 15 seconds before my milk let down, I had this horrible, horrible feeling where I just wanted to die. It’s this all-encompassing feeling. It lasts for probably a minute and then goes away. Every single time I would nurse and with every single one of my babies, it has happened. It’s just a crazy, crazy thing and the only thing that I’ve found to help is once I knew what it was, that helped knowing what it was. It’s a physiological thing. There’s nothing actually wrong with me. My experience with it, I would say, was pretty extreme. I think just realizing that our bodies are so amazing and they serve us so well, but there are differences for everybody. My body clearly has some hormonal glitches just with the C-section and the D-MER and all of these different hormonal chemical things. It was like a perfect storm for the psychosis. I’ve come to that conclusion. But yeah. The D-MER is really interesting to me because it can also vary with women. I mean, everybody has some. It goes away. For some, it’s only with a couple of the kids and for mine, it’s just been a consistent thing with each of my kids. Meagan: Yeah and like you said, it’s something that not a lot of people talk about, but we have a lot of clients, right? I’ve been a doula for a while and it’s like, “I don’t like breastfeeding. It makes me anxious.” They explain these feelings and it’s just not really talked about. I don’t even feel like a lot of these doctors are saying, “Hey, this is a thing,” either. So when I saw that, I just was like, “Oh, I want to talk about that a little bit. I want her to talk about that,” because it’s unique and it’s something that does happen. What would you say is one of the things that really has helped you through all of that? How long did you nurse your babies?Brenda: I self-led weaned all of my kids so it ranged from 2-2.5 years maybe. Meagan: Wow. Brenda: My daughter is almost two and we are still weaning. Meagan: Yeah, so do you still have those feelings, or as baby gets bigger and you do it more, does it fade away? Brenda: Yeah. It’s definitely more extreme in the beginning when you are producing so much more milk. Yeah. Now that she’s older, it would be less, but I still have the feeling like, “Oh, I feel like crap. Okay, my milk is going to come in.” It’s so weird. That is one of my coping mechanisms is that I would think of it as, “Okay, I can look at this as a positive thing. I can look at this as a warning that my milk is coming in,” especially in those first few months when you are constantly leaking so I’d be like, “Okay, where is my baby? I need to nurse before I leak all over.” I tried to make this game out of it because there was literally nothing I could do about it unless I wanted to stop nursing. Meagan: Yeah, yeah. So wild. I also just want to talk really quickly before we end about family-centered Cesareans. With my second, I wasn’t necessarily wanting another Cesarean. I really wanted to VBAC, but that’s just not how the story went. Something that I loved so much was my husband remembered me saying, “If I’m going to have another C-section, I really want to be a part of it.” And so my provider did very similar things and really made me want to be a part of it, and not even to the extent that yours did. I think it’s just important for you to know, listeners, that it is okay for you to ask for a different, non-traditional experience in the OR. It’s okay to say, “Hey, do you have a clear drape for a delivery? Is it okay for me to pull my own baby out?” Some moms scrub and sterilize their own hands. “It is okay? Let’s play music. I want music by my head.” Bring a speaker.I watched it in a mirror and not everybody wants to watch their C-section. I’m kind of weirdly one of those people. I’m weird and I did. I really enjoyed watching it. It felt like I was more a part of my birth watching it. Letting an extra birthing person, a doula, or a photographer be present, cord clamping, or at least milking the cord as long as you possibly can, keeping the vernix on the baby, not trying to wipe them off. There are so many things. There’s vaginal seeding and breastfeeding in the OR. I’m going to put this in the show notes. It’s our blog about family-centered Cesareans. That will be in the show notes. So if you want to know about more options for family-centered Cesareans, check out the show notes and give it a click because there are a lot of options. Even if C-section is desired and it’s like, “Hey, I want this planned C-section,” that’s okay too, but there are definitely more ways to make your C-section even more special and gentle, so definitely check it out. Thank you so much for sharing all of your beautiful stories. I think they are amazing. I think they are each unique and I love that through all of them– you were sick. It was more your family. They were like, “You are not normal right now.” But you were following your intuition. You were following your gut and you were like, “Okay, something is different. I need something different.” I just want to say congratulations on all of your births and thank you so much for being with us today. Brenda: Yeah. Thank you for having me. 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 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