Episode 199 Lauren's VBAC + PPROM

“I hope I give you some hope.”All around, Lauren’s stories are different. Her birthing journey includes Asherman’s syndrome, infertility for over 10 years, two rounds of IVF treatments (each with only one viable embryo), a miscarriage, placenta accreta, and significant hemorrhaging after her first Cesarean delivery. Lauren miraculously got pregnant naturally with her second son. She was committed to having a VBAC even with her complicated medical history. When her water broke at 32 weeks, Lauren made her desires known loud and clear to every person who entered her birthing space that a Cesarean was not an option. Sure enough, Lauren was able to successfully VBAC with no signs of placenta accreta or hemorrhaging. After years of so much heartache and holding onto hope, Lauren was finally able to see one miracle unfold after another.Additional linksThe VBAC Link Community on FacebookHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull transcriptNote: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Meagan: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is where you are at, welcome. You are listening to The VBAC Link podcast. This is Meagan and we have our friend, Lauren, today. You guys, she is currently in Vietnam and it is 4:10 a.m. where she is recording. I cannot believe that she is up and ready to record an episode. We are so grateful for her for being with us today. She has a lot of great things in her story, a lot of great things that sometimes we don’t talk about or know of. There’s a certain thing in her story where I hadn’t even ever heard the word before until I saw it in her story. So I can’t wait to dive into her story and have her tell more about all of the things about her story.Review of the WeekMeagan: Of course, we have a Review of the Week so I will read that and we will dive right in. This is from saraalbinger and she says, “One month ago, I had a successful VBAC induction just 18 months after a Cesarean section. I almost called to schedule a repeat on my due date because I was so scared. Then I found your podcast and listened to it for two days straight. It gave me the courage to go through with the induction and I am so glad I did. I hope more people find this as a resource.”She actually emailed us, which is awesome. Congratulations, Sara, on your VBAC. So happy for you. Like I said, she emailed. You can email us your reviews if you would like or if you have a moment, maybe push “pause” really quickly and jump onto your podcast whether it be Apple or Google Play, and leave us a review. We would really appreciate it and again, we always read one on the episodes, so your review might be next. Lauren’s storyMeagan: Okay. Lauren, I’m so excited to have you. Seriously, I cannot believe that you are up. I don’t know if I could get my tushy out of bed at 4:00 a.m. to record a podcast. I’m so grateful. Lauren: It is early. Meagan: Yes, it is so early. Oh my gosh. We just talked about it. You just had a baby not long ago, so you’re not only up at 4:00 a.m. but probably sleep-deprived within those few hours that you did get to sleep. So seriously, thank you so much for being with us today.  Lauren: No problem, I’m excited to share my story. Meagan: Well, I’m excited to hear it. I would love to turn the time over to you. Share all of the amazing things. You have had such a journey that has led you here today. Lauren: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. This is a wonderful opportunity for me to go back and remember what has happened to me over the last couple of years. My story started, I feel like, way back when. I was a Montessori teacher and at that point, I knew exactly what I wanted out of my birth at the age of 18 or 19 years old. I wanted a water birth. I wanted all-natural and I wanted to have all my kids by the time I was 25. Anyways, that didn’t happen. I got married. I got married when I had just turned 23. Kids did not happen right away. My 25th birthday was the most depressing birthday I’ve ever had. It turns out I was struggling with some infertility there. At that time, I had sought some, I don’t know. I will tell you that I pondered on it and it just didn’t feel right. The time to take care of our infertility didn’t feel right, so we ended up moving our family abroad. My husband and I taught English abroad, then we came back to America. We just so happened to live in Boston. We had some contacts there, but we felt, I don’t know the right word, we felt very inspired to move to Boston. We didn’t start working on the family thing right away because you have to have insurance for that but on the east coast, they pay for infertility treatment. If you have insurance, it’s covered. I didn’t know that at the time. Meagan: That’s amazing. For real?Lauren: Yes, for real.  Meagan: I need to tell my sister who just moved to Boston and is having fertility issues. Lauren: Oh my goodness. Yes, the insurance coverage is amazing. So then I started finding out about other people who had moved there just to get the insurance just to seek infertility treatment. Meagan: Wow, cool. Lauren: Yeah, it was amazing. Exactly. I feel like the right people were put in our path at the right time. They shared the doctors and I was like, “Okay, let me go to your doctor. Okay.” So then pieces started to fall into place to figure out, “What the heck is wrong with me?” I think it had been thirteen years at that point in time of not stopping from having children. Everything was the way it is. So I go and they do this huge check-up on me. My doctors just couldn’t believe the long list of all the crap that was wrong with me especially because I was in my thirties.I ended up having what was called Asherman syndrome. It’s adhesive. It’s scar tissue and they can exist in the cervix or in the uterus. Mine was everywhere. I was 100% scarred over through my cervix and my uterus. It took multiple surgeries to try to remove it. It’s called hysteroscopies. Here’s the miracle here. Asherman syndrome is not well known. It’s still, “Oh, hush-hush.” A lot of women hear the word “adhesive” and that’s exactly what it is. It’s the scar tissue that’s in the uterus and it usually happens after D&C or if you’ve had a miscarriage, there’s a percentage of women who scar over. There are specific doctors out there that will take care of it. One is in Boston and the other one lives in California. I got to see that very specialized doctor and that was just a huge miracle. I felt like I was being taken care of. So we went there and my scar tissue was just so severe. I’m pretty sure I still have it. It’s something that doesn’t really go away, but it was blocking my tubes. That, and we had a diminished ovarian reserve, so my eggs were like I was a 44-year-old woman. I think I was 32 at this time and going through all this. I’m like, “My eggs are old. I’m old.”Then they did a biopsy of my uterus. It showed that it was inactive.Meagan: What?Lauren: It was menopausal. I was like, “So I’ve gone through menopause and here I am.” It turns out that if you don’t have a period for over a year, you’re considered in menopause. I didn’t realize that because I hadn’t had one in seven years at this point. Meagan: Wow. I didn’t even know that either. I mean, I didn’t have a period but I have an IUD, so I’m guessing that’s a little different, right? Lauren: Mhmm, yeah. Meagan: I didn’t know that. Lauren: Yeah, I had no idea. I was learning so much so quickly. There were a lot of emotions. I cried and cried because I felt like my journey of having children was completely over. I had a very slim chance of having a baby and so I was like, “Okay. We’re doing this. I’m jumping head-in.” So I jumped and with IVF, I had only one good embryo out of my first round. It ended up in a miscarriage. It was nonviable and it ended up that it had something wrong with the chromosomes in it. They did some testing. This is where I feel like, “Oh, I had this journey.” Here it comes now. With IVF, they watch you and so after my two-week wait, I had a positive test. Okay. Then, they watch it grow. Mine wasn’t growing, so then I had my ultrasound. They were like, “Oh, this isn’t right. There is no heartbeat. This doesn’t even look right. Whatever.” I’m bawling my eyes out because it’s really hard.They waited an extra week until I was seven weeks when I went in for my D&E. The doctor told me it was because of my Asherman’s that it was going to cause a huge, big problem. So he goes in. He scoops it out. That’s the way I like to think of it. He just scoops it out and he’s done. Lo and behold, my HCG levels were still the same, if not going up. I was still feeling very sick. The next two or three days later, I’m like, “Something is really wrong. Something is really wrong.” I went back and they drew my blood. Come to find out, my levels are still going up. I’m like, “Something is wrong.” I went back to my Asherman syndrome doctor. They did an ultrasound and then they did an in-office, I was wide awake, hysteroscopy. They took little scissors and they tried to go in and take out what they could see. Meagan: What?! This is giving me chills right now thinking about going through that. Lauren: Uh-uh. It was so painful. Meagan: Oh my goodness.Lauren: It was so bad. I’m just bawling my eyes out on this table and they were like, “This is too much.” I was like, “Yeah. This is too much.” I was scheduled for surgery the next day and that’s when I was told about my accreta. That teeny, tiny little sac had grown into my lining. Again, my Asherman’s syndrome was worse than the first time I went, which is saying something. I had a few more surgeries after that one just to clean it up. It took a long time, a lot of hormone therapy, and a ton of estrogen to try to get my uterus back up and running. They called it “jump starting” because I was still not having periods. They were forcing them through medication. Anyway, it was just a crazy time of my life. The second round of IVF was maybe six to nine months later. Again, I only had one little embryo. It turned out to be my son. At the time, we didn’t know the sex of our child until he was born, so it was a really fun surprise. I was so excited. Well, and surely hesitant because you are like, “Oh my goodness, is this going to stick? What’s going to happen?” He stuck and he continued to grow. His percentile growths every ultrasound were still 13% and 15%, so I had a small baby. It always worried me. We got flagged for genetic testing. We got flagged and we got called. It was like, “You’ve got to come in right now. We’ve got to do this ultrasound.” The worry that comes over your face is like, “Oh my gosh.” You just start breaking down and immediately crying. We drove straight to the hospital to do a two-hour-long ultrasound of just laying on the table. They don’t talk to you, by the way, in this clinic. They just look. They look. They look. They look, and then at the very end, they may say something or you have to go to your doctor and your doctor will tell you but the ultrasound tech does not say anything to you.So it’s just nerve-wracking. We ended up seeing a genetic counselor right after who then gave us the results of, “Oh, it’s not anything. You’re fine.” You had a little bit of leakage that could have caused this. It’s not Down syndrome. You’re okay. I was like, “Whew.” So other than that, my pregnancy was pretty normal. We got a doula right away, super grateful for her, and then my baby just wouldn’t turn. He wanted to be feet down. I don’t know how to explain it. He just wanted to be breech. We were doing our birthing classes. I just remember the doula who was doing them was like, “Well,” I don’t know I was probably at 30 weeks. She was like, “Oh, he should really be head down.” I’m like, “Really? At this point, he should really be?” She was like, “Yeah. You really need to get on it more.” I was like, “Okay, I need to get on it.” At that point, I was like, “Okay.” So my doula and I worked on Spinning Babies. I spent so much time upside down every day. I was on an ironing board. I was doing all of these things for Spinning Babies. You buy the stuff. All of the stuff, I bought it. It wasn’t working, so then someone was like, “Okay, you should go to the acupuncturist and do this epoxy–”. I was like, “Okay.” So then I’m burning this thing on the outside of my pinky toe on my right foot for 20 minutes. Meagan: Mhmm. Bladder 06.Lauren: Yeah, but I’m very pregnant, so to bend over for 20 minutes to do one toe and to do 20 minutes on the other toe was excruciating. I did it every morning and every night. I was like, “Okay. This is a lot. I am very dedicated to spinning this baby.” That didn’t work, so I started chiropractic. I started seeing a chiropractor during my last month of pregnancy. I saw her every other day, and then I started seeing her every day. Again, nothing, and then I just got this gut feeling. It was, “Your baby’s going to be born the way he needs to be born. You just need to accept that and you need to go with it.” When that happened, it just clicked in my brain. I was like, “Okay. I can still have a birth plan for a Cesarean. I can still do this and that’s okay.” But that switch when you have planned something and you believe in something so hard– to make that switch in your brain, it’s so difficult. I still was holding hope that somehow this baby is going to flip. They wanted to try an inversion at 37 weeks. I was like, “No,” because they were like, “If you spin the baby in the hospital and it works, then you are having a baby. If it doesn’t work, you are still having a baby.” I was like, “Oh, then I’m waiting.” I’m very grateful. So we went in on my scheduled day with my big, long list of everything I wanted for my Cesarean which was wonderful. My doctor was very supportive and she made sure everything on my list got crossed off. I got to completely watch my baby being born, the surgery, and everything which was really unique for me. I didn’t realize I was going to get emotional about my little Oden. Anyway, I just remember laying there and having my surgery. My husband was right beside me and my doula was also in the room with her essential oils. He comes out and it was announced that he was a little boy. He gets cleaned up. My husband goes over. My husband gets to do skin-to-skin with him. It was such a beautiful birth. It’s like, I don’t regret it at all. I’m just like, “I did everything I could.” Once you see that little baby, he was just, oh wow. He was on my husband’s chest and he was rooting and making rooting noises. My doctor and everyone in the room just stopped. They were like, “We’ve never seen this before.” We’ve never seen a baby come out Cesarean and literally be banging his head on a chest wanting the breast. I knew right away. I was like, “That’s my baby. He’s hungry. He knows where it’s at.” My doula was really excited. So anyways, I remember at this point that my doctor mentioned something about blood. “Oh, there’s a lot of blood,” but I was dismissive because I had this cute baby over here rooting. It wasn’t even until after I was in recovery and I started breastfeeding that my doctor came in and told me that I had hemorrhaged. I had an MFM who specialized in accreta and percreta and all of these things because I was just so worried that if I had a seven-week sac that stuck to my uterus, then what is it going to look like at full-term? I had done all of this research and I was prepared to lose my uterus with this birth. It didn’t happen. I just felt so blessed. I felt so blessed that I got to keep it and that my child was born at full term. I just remember, “I can’t wait for baby number two.” Anyway, I enjoyed this birth so much and him so much. The hemorrhage only added to my list. I had forgotten about it until baby number two and then it starts adding on, right?Okay, miscarriage, baby number one, baby number two comes and I really wanted my VBAC. I don’t necessarily– my pregnancy was baby number two. I had accepted a job that paid for my insurance and I was going to go back to my doctors, but I ended up getting pregnant before. I mentioned before that I stopped having periods sometime in my twenties and went through menopause. I had gotten the COVID vaccine and gotten both shots. After my second shot, 17 days later, I started the first period I had in years and years and years and years and years and years. I was so shocked. I had no idea what was happening to my body. I was like, “This can’t be happening to me. This is so weird and so foreign to me.” I remember just calling my doctor like “What is going on?” She was like, “You are not the only woman to report this. It’s okay, just go with it. Track it. Let’s see if we can have a natural pregnancy. Let’s see if you can get pregnant naturally.” I’m like, “Wow. This is insane.” So, in the third month, I was pregnant. I just couldn’t believe it. Meagan: Wow. Lauren: I’m like, “But my eggs are crap.”Meagan: Wow, wow. Lauren: Yeah! I’m like, “My eggs are crap. Everything is crap, right?” She’s like, “Lauren, we are just going to go with it.” I’m just like, “Okay. Just going with it.” So yeah. Third month, boom, and I was pregnant. And yeah, wow. But it started off–Meagan: I’m sure. Yeah. Lauren: You just don’t believe it. After you’ve been through everything, you don’t believe it. So I just couldn’t believe it. I started having a lot of pain and this is where I was like, “I’m going to lose this baby.” I just had this gut feeling like something was really wrong. I ended up going to the emergency room the day I took a pregnancy test. I was going. I was like, “It had better not be ectopic. I need to make sure this is in the right place. There’s something going on.” They’re like, “You’re not pregnant.” That’s what they told me. I was like, “Okay.” This little, dinky hospital. They did a urine test and they told me I wasn’t pregnant. I literally had to tell them, “Listen. I’ve been through infertility treatment and I know that you could do a blood test to tell me if I’m pregnant or not. Come on.” And so then they do a blood test but in the meantime, it’s been an hour and I’m a mess. I am crying. I am just an emotional, crazy mess. They come back and they’re like, “Oh yeah, your levels are 100, so most likely, you’re going to lose this baby. It’s very early.” They already put this on me. So then they gave me a doctor because I am new to this facility because, sorry. I had moved from Boston to Connecticut to work and buy a house during the pandemic. So I am in little Podunkville with Podunk doctors. There’s nothing wrong with Podunk doctors, sorry! But it’s just different when you go from downtown Boston, top-notch to country, okay?So we were there and he kept telling me that my levels weren’t rising. They weren’t doubling. They are supposed to double and they weren’t. Baby wasn’t growing and nothing was happening for two weeks. So they did an ultrasound, but no heartbeat, nothing. There was something there, but they were like, “Lauren, we will give you another week before we do something.” I’m just a mess. I’m a complete mess. They drew my blood again and my progesterone levels were decent, but my pregnancy hormone was just not growing.And so a week or two weeks went by, I can’t remember. I had a heartbeat. I just remember feeling so relieved. I looked at the doctor. I was like, “I’m never going to see you again. I’m so sorry, but I’m never going to see you again. I’m going to go to the best of the best.” So I jumped right back to my MFM up in Boston. The first thing out of my mouth was, “Okay, I’m pregnant. Will you support me with a VBAC?” And she said, “Yes.” She said, “Yes, 100%.” This was the kicker. She was like, “But Lauren, you have to know that because of all your issues, we are aiming for a vaginal birth. You can’t sit there and go, ‘I want it to be unmedicated.’” She was like, “What we are aiming for is a vaginal birth.”I was like, “Okay.” And then I go home, I’m like, “I want an unmedicated birth!” I’m like, “I don’t care.”Meagan: You’re like, “Joke’s on you guys, I’m going to do that anyway.”Lauren: Yes, exactly. So my pregnancy is progressing. Baby is head down the whole entire time. I’m super excited. I remember at 28 weeks, I had this very distinct feeling come over me that I was going to have this baby early. I didn’t know what that meant. So I was like, “Okay.” So around week 30, I started prepping my house. I bought all of the baby things, got baby things out, just little things like that. In the meantime, I’m teaching kindergarten, I’m still working full time. I still have a toddler now and I’m just resuming life.This is when I really started hitting hard on The VBAC Link. I was listening to every podcast every chance I got. I was listening on my lunch break just to prepare myself. I did a class with you guys. There was an OB that was there. I had a ton of questions that I got answered, so that was really wonderful. I just really appreciate this podcast being there. I feel like that’s why I really want to share because it was just so helpful, but no one had anything like what I had gone through. I’m like, “Maybe that means something.” I’m like, “Am I crazy? Can I do this?” sort of a thing. Anyway, so I didn’t feel very prepared. My 32-week doctor’s appointment was on a Friday. I drove to Boston which was an hour and a half away from where I live. It was a devastating doctor’s visit. My sweet little baby boy was not growing. I had what is called, I have it in here because I’m like, “What? I forget everything.” It was fetal growth restriction.Meagan: Was it IUGR? Intrauterine growth restriction?Lauren: Yeah, but they called it FGR here. It was like fetal growth restriction, yes. Meagan: FGR, fetal growth restriction, yeah. Lauren: Thank you for that. I forget all of the things. And so then I was like, “Okay. Tell me exactly what that means.” My baby was measuring in the 1st percentile. So then she goes back and she was like, “Well, he’s barely been over a 10th percentile this whole time. He’s always been very, very small.” He was in the 10th and the 13th. I was like, “Where do we need to be to get out of this?” She was like, “You have to be at 10% to not have this label.” I was like, “That’s not going to happen, is it?” She was like, “No, I’m sorry.” And I’m like, “Oh man.”So at this point in time, I was like, “Okay.” I was visiting her every week. I had her visit plus I had a blood draw, plus I had an ultrasound, so now it was moving up to three visits a week and I was having to drive an hour and a half. I’m like, “This is not going to be sustainable. I cannot work full time and do this.” I had made all of my appointments for that next week. I go home that Friday and then Saturday morning at 3:00, my toddler wakes up and I go in to tend to him. A big thing about FGR was that I had to count my movements. I wasn’t feeling my baby move because he was so small that there were times that I didn’t feel pregnant. I was like, “This is really weird.” It was one of those times when I was up at 3:00 a.m. and I noticed that there were zero movements. I’m like, “Okay, maybe he’s asleep.” So I spent time with my toddler, put him back to bed, go back to my room and I’m starting to feel him move. So then I start kick counting, kick counting, kick counting, and then my toddler gets up again. I’m like, “Oh my goodness, you’ve got to be kidding me.” He comes into my room. He wants to snuggle, so I let him in my bed and he’s holding me. I’m holding him and my husband gets out of bed. He doesn’t do that. Anyway, next thing I know, I just feel this gush between my legs and I’m like, “What the heck? I am not prepared for this. This is not okay.” We have Google in my home, so I was like, “Okay, Google. Broadcast.” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, “My water just broke! You have to come right now!” My husband runs in and he’s freaking out. I don’t know. It was a really wacky picture in my mind. He has his arms and legs sprawled out like, “What’s going on?” I’m like, “Take our son. Take our son and get me a cup because this is gushing out and I don’t know what to do.” It was crazy. I started contracting, but they weren’t painful at all. They were like Braxton Hicks. My belly was tightening and then it was just gushes of water. I was like, “This is so crazy.”So I immediately called my doctor. This was the part that made me nervous because here I am preparing for a VBAC and the doctor immediately said, “You need to get to the hospital right now. You will have a repeat Cesarean and we will get this baby out. Something is wrong.” Meagan: Whoa. Lauren: I immediately started crying. Yes. Meagan: Scary. So scary. Lauren: Oh, 100%. The good thing is that I had 40 minutes for someone to drive to be with my son to ponder, sit down, and try to process this. Meanwhile, I’m walking around the house with a cup between my legs trying to catch all the water that is coming out of me. My husband and I were talking back and forth like, “This is not anything I had ever ever ever thought of.” I’m like, “Okay. I’m going to go in. I’m going to have a VBAC.” And so we both agreed that we were going to be open to what the doctors were saying. “This a bunch of learning. We are on a learning curve now. This is not on our terms. It’s on this baby’s terms. We are now open-minded and learning.” It took us an hour and nine minutes to get to the hospital. We passed five policemen. One actually passed us. We were way speeding. We were easily doing 90-100 the whole way. No one pulled us over, thank goodness. It turned out to not be that much of an emergency. We got there and the first thing that they did was they took me back to confirm that I broke my water. I was like, “You guys can’t see the stuff gushing out of me?” I’m like, “Is this not water?” They’re like, “Well, it could be urine.” I was like, “No, no, no, no, no.” I know what urine is. This is not urine. They were laughing because I was like, “This is not pee, or else I have been continually peeing on myself for two and a half hours now.”And so anyway, I’m like, “Okay, whatever.” And then they were like, “Yes. Okay. This is the fluid.” They came to my room and they talked to me about everything. PPROM is what it’s called. It’s a premature rupture of membranes. Now, I was a PPROM. Meagan: Yeah. PROM is just premature rupture of membranes but PPROM is premature meaning that the baby is before 37 weeks. Lauren: Exactly. Meagan: Premature premature rupture of membranes. Lauren: It was happening way too early. And because I was 32 weeks, they weren’t going to stop it, so I did not receive any magnesium or anything like that to stop it which I was kind of grateful for because after I read, I was like, “Oh, I don’t want that in my body.” It burns like fire. But they did start me on penicillin and steroids and all of these things because they wanted the steroids for the baby’s lungs. The penicillin was because the risk of infection goes significantly higher when you have PPROMd or when you have PROM’d early because now I’m just sitting there with open stuff and it’s easier to get an infection.They refused to check me, which was nice. They would not check my cervix to see how dilated I was or anything like that, but I do remember at the very beginning, she guesstimated that I was about a 1, so it was nothing. And so I sat there. They were like, “You’re being admitted to the hospital. You will be here until you have your baby. Since you are 32 weeks, we will induce you. If you get to 34 weeks, you will be induced and you will have your baby.” The reality was that they go through my chart and this is where my past kicked me in the butt. They were like, “Okay, you have a chance of accreta. You have hemorrhaged with your previous Cesarean. You have to put in your mind that most likely you are going to have another Cesarean.” I was like, “No, I’m not.” This whole entire time, I was like, “No, I’m not.” I was like, “No, I’m not. I’m having a VBAC and that’s it.” I kept telling every doctor that came into my room. I was like, “Listen, I’m having a VBAC.” I was like, “I’m having a VBAC. It’s happening, so I don’t even want to discuss another Cesarean unless it really gets to that point. I don’t want to discuss it.” I was like, “I want to discuss how I can have this baby vaginally. That’s what I want.” They were very supportive. I’m just so grateful and they were just like, “Yeah. Okay. This is awesome. This woman has opinions.” And so every new resident– I was at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Sorry, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that.Meagan: You can totally share. You can totally share. Lauren: Okay. Okay, so it’s a learning hospital. You have a lot of residents and interns. I don’t know exactly what you call them all. Every morning, there were ten doctors that would visit my room a few times a day. It was a lot of doctors. Anyway, so Wednesday comes and before that, they were like, “Okay, listen. You’re either going to have this baby within 48 hours or it’s going to be a week or two. It’s either one or the other. We don’t really have people in the middle.”Guess what? I was in the middle, so whatever. Meagan: Way to be different.Lauren: Right? All around, I’m different. The thing that really worried me is that I was like, “Okay, I want a VBAC,” but at the same time, I had these NICU doctors who were right there on my case like, “Okay. Here are the chances of this. Here are the chances of this. Your baby might be dealing with all of these different things.” Anyway, they were updating me every day on where my baby’s development was for that day and what could be possibly wrong with him when he was born. “Oh, by the way, our NICU is full. We don’t have any beds. So if you go into labor, we will be transferring you to a different hospital with your child,” or however it works. I’m like, “What? Are you serious?” They’re like, “Yep. We’re full and so is the hospital next to us, so it will be the hospital down the street.” I’m like, “Oh wow. This is incredible.” Anyway, so right then and there, I started praying, “Okay. Listen to me. If I’m going to go into labor, it better be the day that someone gets sent home.” It’s got to work out. It’s got to work out. It did, by the way. It worked out. On Wednesday, I started to have more pain. It was like, “Okay. I’m still contracting by the way. I keep having what I call Braxton Hicks contractions because they were not painful. It was just that my whole belly would tighten and my water would continue to spew out. That’s the best way I can say it. I remember distinctly that I woke up at 1:00 in the morning on Wednesday and I started having pain. I called my nurse right away and I was like “Listen, they shifted. My contractions have shifted now, but they are still 10-14 minutes apart.” We just kept an eye on it. In the meantime, every time I have a contraction, my baby’s heart disappears. They can’t find him. I’m like, “Okay. Baby, cut this out.” So when that happens, guess what they start talking about? They talk about a Cesarean. They’re like, “Oh, Lauren. His heart rate is really dipping really low. We are going to end up. You need to prepare.” I’m like, “Nope. I’m not preparing.” And so I finally get up out of my bed. I’ve been in a bed this whole entire time. A friend came and visited me. It was 1:00 in the afternoon at this point. I was standing up during the whole visit which was the most I had stood in two or three days. I’m starting to have regular contractions. They were easy, 4-6 minutes apart, somewhere around there. They started being really painful and I had to breathe through them. I’m this way. I’m like, “Listen. I’m not going to call my nurse in here because she’s just going to prepare me for a Cesarean.” So I go for an hour with my friend and my friend is like, “Lauren, you really need to call your nurse.” I’m like, “Fine. You leave. I’ll call my nurse.” So I called my nurse and, sorry I’m laughing. She’s freaking out because she is like, “Why didn’t you call me?” I was like, “Listen, I didn’t call you because I don’t want to have a Cesarean.” They called the doctor. He guesstimates and he says I’m about a 1 or a 2. I haven’t changed much. Now, they have increased and they’re back to back. I could not. I was like, “What? A natural birth? I wanted that? That’s crazy.” They wouldn’t let me out of my bed because of the heart rate and everything that was going on with the baby, so I was stuck and confined to my bed. I was just holding the railing and turned to my side. Every contraction was worsened by a million because my nurse was like, “Listen, if you don’t want a Cesarean, I have to find the heart rate of this baby.” And so she is literally, in the middle of my contractions, I’m screaming and she has got that monitor and she is searching for the baby’s heart rate to prove that he is okay. This continues and she calls the doctor back in here because my contractions were literally on top of each other for 2-3 minutes. It was so intense. I really didn’t feel like I had time to breathe. I was like, “Listen. I am having this baby. I am going to have this baby.” My doctor– he’s not really my doctor. He’s the resident of my doctor. He walks back in and he basically tells me to suck it up and that lots of moms go through this. I’m not having this baby. He will check me for real this time. So he goes in and I’m about 3 centimeters dilated, but I’m 90% effaced. He was like, “Oh. Hmm. This could change. We’re going to send you to labor and delivery, but don’t put it in your mind that you’re having a baby today because this could stall.” He was like, “I’ve seen this stall so many times.” I was like, “How would this stall? I’m in so much pain.” He was like, “No. This could still stall.” I’m like, “Okay, whatever. I’ve PPROMd. I have no idea what I’m talking about. This is all new to me. Okay, fine. This can stall. This labor can stall, sure. Okay.”I am put in labor and delivery and my labor nurse looks at me. She was like, “You’re going to be having this baby in a couple of hours. I don’t know what your doctor is talking about.” She is bad-mouthing him so hard. She’s like, “I don’t know what he’s talking about. This is insane.” She was like, “Listen, I know. I don’t want you to be infected,” but she was like, “I am going to check you right now. There is no way that with the amount of pain you are in and your contractions are on top of each other.” She was like, “I’m going to check you. I’m going to call the anesthesiologist. We’re going to get him in here. We’re going to get you an epidural,” because I was in so much pain. Anyway, I can’t believe it. This is where I’m like, “I wanted a natural birth?” So my anesthesiologist comes in right after my doctor had come in again to check me. He was like, “It’s only been 30 minutes. Stop paging me.” Those were his exact words. “Stop paging me. It’s only been 30 minutes.” And now, I’ve progressed to a 5. His eyes got really wide because before that, he yelled at my anesthesiologist, “You’re not needed here. You need to leave. This is not happening,” like that. My nurse was like, “What?!”And then he checked me and he was like, “Umm, this is happening. I’m so sorry. Anesthesiologist, please come back in the room.” He’s yelling, “Please come back into the room. Help her! This is happening and it’s happening very, very fast.” They were like, “Where’s your husband?” I was like, “Oh my gosh, my husband’s not with me.” At this point, I’m panicking. He’s not even with me.Meagan: Oh no!Lauren: Yeah and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to call him right now.” They were like, “Call him.” So I call him. I was like, “Listen, I know I called you an hour ago and things were progressing slowly, but you have to be here now.” He was like, “Lauren, I’ve got an hour and a half.” I was like, “Permission to speed. Permission to put your cute little sports car to work. Go fast.” He was there in 45 minutes. He showed up. They were like, “Hold the baby.” There are the funniest things that you remember. It’s like, “Okay.” My epidural half-worked. I was still having pain, but it was this weird floating area of, “I can feel pain on my left side, but not on my right side,” and so it was this weird state of where I was. I’m actually kind of grateful for it because I still got that natural birth feeling that I wanted. I still very much felt the ring of fire and the birth and at the same time, I feel like the hard contractions were taken away.So it was a nice in-between that I felt. But as soon as my husband got there, my labor nurse was like, “Listen, Lauren. I just need to tell you that because of your long list,” here it comes again, “because of this long list, you might end up with a Cesarean. I want you to know that they are preparing for it.” This time now, I’m uncontrollably crying because this is not what I wanted. She was like, “I need to also tell you something else.” I was like, “What?” She was like, “There are going to be probably 12-15 people in this room as you give birth.” I was like, “What? How many people?”Meagan: Why? Why so many people?Lauren: Exactly, because it was a learning hospital. Meagan: Oh, okay. Lauren: My doctor had his two doctors and my labor nurse had three assistants, and then I had the NICU team for the baby, and that’s what it was. So I had the NICU doctor plus his three assistants or residents, and then they brought people in to watch me have this VBAC after accreta and after hemorrhaging. I wanted to be fully present for this birth. I told the nurse, “I want to grab my baby and I want to pull my baby out. That’s what I want. I want to pull him out. I want him out on my chest.” They were like, “Lauren, the realization of that happening– if he cries, sure. If he doesn’t cry, we are so sorry. We have to take him. We have to.” I’m praying. Long story short, the baby comes straight out. I mean, he’s 4 pounds. They estimated him to be 3 pounds, but he was 4 pounds. He comes out. I got to watch the whole thing with the mirror. I had one of those resident people taking pictures the whole time, so I got really good pictures of my birth and here he is. He’s screaming, so he has healthy lungs. I was just so happy that he had healthy lungs. I was like, “Okay. We’re good.” Anyway, I got to hold him for about one minute while we did delayed cord clamping, and then I had to hand him over. I didn’t get to see him again for hours and hours which was really hard, but I had done it. I had done it and I had my VBAC. It was successful. I’m just so grateful through my whole entire story that it had gone the way I really wanted it to go. I feel like I was prepared for so many things. Right after he was born, they were like, “Okay, the placenta is not stuck, Lauren. There’s no accreta. Check. Lauren, you’re not hemorrhaging. Check. Now, we just have to stitch you up.” I remember him taking way too long to stitch me up, but I just remember what I always wanted. I was able to jump out of my bed. The epidural got turned off and I was able to get up and start walking within an hour and a half. That’s the whole reason for me. I want this vaginal birth, but I want to be present whereas, for my Cesarean, it took me almost a full 12-24 hours before I could really get out of my bed. It’s just very different and I’m very grateful. I’m very grateful for the information that I received through this podcast to help me get the birth story that I wanted. I’m hoping that my story can help some of you out there that are listening that maybe struggle with infertility and any of the same things I did. I hope I give you some hope. Meagan: Yes. Oh my gosh. So many miracles in your story. So many miracles.Lauren: So many. Meagan: From moving to Boston and finding the doctor that you did find because that in itself, there are so few doctors out there who even know much about this, and then to go through all that you did to get pregnant and then trusting that, “Okay. This baby is just wanting to be this way and this is the journey.” And then again, not getting pregnant and what a crazy thing that all of a sudden, you are pregnant after months and then years!Lauren: Mhmm. They did a pathology. They did testing on my placenta to see why this all happened and why I PPROMd. It was because, I don’t even know what they are called, but the placenta has the phalanges that attach to the uterus and it pumps the vitamins and nutrients in. Mine were scarred over and adhesive. They had adhesives and they were swollen. He wasn’t getting the proper nutrition that he needed, which was why he came early. I can’t help but think, “Oh, maybe that’s my Asherman’s.” They tell me it’s because of COVID because I had COVID.Meagan: That’s another question I was going to ask. Have you had COVID? From what I have heard, even the vaccine, which is interesting how yours is linked to the opposite with starting your period. They are saying that COVID vaccines are related to changing cycles and things like that. But sometimes, if they get the vaccine, then they go into premature labor. We’ve been seeing a lot of people get COVID and then their placentas are just like, “Hey, I’m done,” and they send the message to the body that they need to have a baby. I’m curious. Maybe it’s a little bit of all of it. I don’t know. COVID stuff is all a mystery. It’s all very a fascinating thing.Lauren: Well, I’ll tell you that the NICUs are definitely full. The doctors are definitely telling people that it’s because of COVID that so many of these women are having early, premature births. Meagan: So interesting. How long before did you have COVID?Lauren: I had COVID at Christmas and I PPROM’d in late February. He was born on February 23rd. Meagan: Crazy, so a couple of months. Lauren: A month and a half-ish. Meagan: Yeah. Interesting. So interesting. Well, I am so grateful for you for getting up at not even dawn, for getting up in the middle of the night to share your beautiful stories with us. We are so happy for you and grateful for you. I will promise you this. You are going to touch someone out there. I know you will. Lauren: Thanks. I really appreciate that and again, thank you so much for having me. 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