Episode 203 Kayana's VBAC + Birth After Preterm C-Section

“It was the most amazing moment of my life. I still get emotional just thinking about that feeling of pushing that baby out of me and being able to have that immediate skin-to-skin that I had wanted so badly and wasn’t able to have with my daughter. I had waited and waited so long to be able to have a brand new, fresh baby boy on my chest.”Kayana is a strong powerhouse with such a sweet, beautiful heart. Her stories are filled with so many wild twists and turns including infertility, IVF, premature birth at 31 weeks, NICU time, a miscarriage, a cerclage, progesterone shots, being abandoned by a doula, a low and slow Pitocin induction, scary postpartum hemorrhaging, and the blissful, magical VBAC moment she was dreaming of.  We know you will learn so much from Kayana’s many experiences and leave feeling inspired by her strength and positivity!Additional linksThe VBAC Link Blog: VBAC After Preterm C-sectionFind a VBAC Link DoulaHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull transcriptNote: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Meagan: Happy Wednesday, everybody. It is Meagan with The VBAC Link and we have another VBAC story for you today. Our storyteller today is on a road trip, so we are going to have maybe some kiddos along the way, maybe my dogs. My dog likes to bark too, so it’s going to be a fun one. We are going to bring everyone along with this birth story today.We are going to be talking about a lot, you guys. She has so many things that really are relevant in her story. She has infertility, IVF, premature birth, miscarriage, cerclage, was actually abandoned by a doula so we are going to talk about that, induction, and postpartum hemorrhage. It’s heavy. We’ve got a lot of yummy things to go into, so I won’t take up too much time so we can definitely get into her story, but I want to do a Review of the Week and then we’ll jump right in. Review of the WeekMeagan: Today’s review is from Amylynn Seider. Amylynn, I typed it wrong. Amylynn Seider and this is on Apple Podcasts. She says, “I really can’t express how informative and empowering this podcast has been for me following my traumatic birth in 2019. In the 16 weeks I’ve been pregnant and a listener, I feel deeply strengthened by the stories of women from across the globe and more informed thanks to the education provided by Meagan and Julie. I look forward to my VBAC in October knowing that I will be fueled by the women in this community. So very grateful.”That was in April, so she’s coming right up on this VBAC. It’s August right now during this time that we are recording, so this is going to be fun. So Amylynn, if you wouldn’t mind, write us and tell us how things went. Kayana’s storyMeagan: Okay, are you excited? I am so excited. So okay, is it Kayana? Is that how you say your name?Kayana: It’s Kay-anna.Meagan: Kay-anna, okay. Kayana: Yes. It’s a hard one.Meagan: I’ve been calling you Kay-ahna in my mind.Kayana: No, you’re good. It’s a hard one. Even my husband said it wrong for the first three or four months of dating, so don’t feel bad. Meagan: Okay, and she’s in Idaho, so we are excited to hear about her journey with her two babies. If you haven’t seen her image, it’s on Instagram and Facebook. You guys, this family is beautiful so go give her a shout of love today on the post or go find it. But okay, we’ll turn the time over to you to share whatever you feel is going to be wonderful for these listeners. Kayana: Okay, so I guess we’ll just start from the beginning. Before we ever got pregnant with our little girl who is our first, we struggled with infertility for about four years. We don't really know the cause of it. I have been diagnosed with PCOS and so the doctors have said that that’s the reason for infertility, but there were years within that trying phase where I was on different medications and things to induce ovulation. That ovulation was confirmed. That was for months and months at a time and I still didn’t get pregnant. I don’t know if there’s maybe more to it than just the PCOS or what. We don’t really know. It’s kind of a question mark up in the air. Meagan: Yeah. That’s the hardest thing when it’s a mystery like that.Kayana: Yeah, it is because it’s just frustrating. Infertility is so hard. It’s excruciating, but yeah. We struggled for about four years with that. We tried, like I said, a bunch of rounds of medication. We tried, oh gosh, I think we did four or five IUIs, and eventually, we moved on and went ahead with IVF. We did an IVF round and we were so, so blessed that it worked on the first try, which, I know not everyone has that situation and I feel for that. It’s so hard. We were able to have it work the first time and we got pregnant with our sweet little baby girl. The pregnancy with her went pretty smoothly. I was very, very, very sick, like, throwing up 15 times a day every day. Meagan: Oh. Kayana: Yeah. Meagan: That does not sound pleasant. Kayana: No, it was awful. From week 5 until probably week 28, it was just never-ending. But other than that, it was a pretty uneventful pregnancy. She was due in August of 2018. The doctor I was seeing with her at the beginning of my pregnancy, we love him so much. He’s here in Idaho and he was with us through all of our infertility stuff. He helped us through a lot of that. He did some of our IUIs and stuff. He obviously had to hand me off to an infertility doctor for IVF, but he was with us through everything before that. He actually, he and his wife experienced infertility as well. So he kind of–Meagan: Connected. Kayana: –just really was there for us and understood a lot of it. Yeah, and so when we went to him for our first pregnancy appointment after doing IVF, he just sat in the room and cried with us. He just, it was just so sweet. We just love him to pieces. We planned on him being our doctor through delivery with our baby girl, but plans changed. Out of nowhere, around 27 weeks– I think I was 27 weeks– we ended up moving out of state super last minute. It was very unexpected. We ended up leaving Idaho and moving to Washington. Obviously, I was devastated to leave my doctor who I loved so much. We moved up to Washington and we were in a frazzle trying to find a new doctor and things because I was 27 weeks. I was getting further along and needed more appointments at that point, but we didn’t know anything would go wrong yet. We got up there and I had one appointment with a doctor up there who we found. It was one of those clinics where they just cycle you through all the doctors and have you see everybody throughout your pregnancy. They had nine different doctors there at that clinic. I saw one, just whatever one they placed me with. I had one appointment with that doctor and then a couple of weeks later, I went into labor at 31 weeks. Yeah. Out of nowhere, totally unexpectedly, I went into labor at 31 weeks. I want to say a Saturday is where I really started feeling some contractions that were stopping me in my tracks a little bit. I feel a little silly now looking back because I didn’t really realize that that’s what it was. I was only 31 weeks, so it’s not like I was expecting to go into labor. I had heard from so many people, “Oh yeah, you start to get contractions here and there towards the end of your pregnancy and some cramping is normal.” You hear all sorts of things, so when I started having what I thought were just cramps, I didn’t think much of it. So that was Saturday. That continued Sunday and by Monday, it had gotten pretty dang intense. They started to get closer together and more intense. My husband and I started to think, “Okay. This is not right. I don’t think this is a normal thing to be happening at 31 weeks.” We started timing it. We realized just how close together they were and started to panic a little bit. We looked at each other and said, “Okay, we need to go to the hospital.” I stood up to go get my shoes on and I went to the bathroom before we left, sat on the toilet, and just gushed blood everywhere. Just so much blood. Our hearts dropped. We were freaked out. We’re like, “What is going on?”My husband picked me up, carried me out to his truck, threw me in, and I don’t think he’s ever driven so fast in his entire life. I’m pretty sure he was going 90 mph through 35 mph speed zones. He was booking it to the hospital. We lived about 15 minutes away from the hospital. At one point actually, while we were on the freeway, a police officer ended up behind us while he was speeding so fast and followed us until he saw us turn into the hospital. He kind of backed off and left us alone. I’m sure he realized what was going on. Meagan: What was going on, yeah? Kayana: So that was kind of funny. Yeah, seriously, so he didn’t pull us over. That was Monday. We got to the hospital and sure enough, I was in full-on labor. I was between a 4 and a 5 dilated when we got there. They were able to stop the labor with medications, but they did say that “Because of how dilated you are, you are not leaving this hospital until the baby is here.” Of course, I’m all geared up. I’m like, “Okay. I’m going to lay in this hospital bed for another 9 weeks until my due date. That’s totally fine. I’m ready for anything. We’re going to keep this baby in. We’ll just watch shows. This is totally fine. It’s going to be fine.”That was my mindset. I’m like, “We’ll just keep this baby in. We’ve got this.” So that was Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday passed. We were just hanging out at the hospital. My in-laws had flown in to come to see us. We’re really close with my in-laws, so they flew in to see us and spend time with us in the hospital. It was all good and then Thursday came along and they said, “Okay, one of these medications that you’re on,” I can’t remember what it was, but they said that there was one of them that you can’t be on for long periods of time without a break. They said that you could only do it for about two days at a time, then your body needs a break from it. So they were like, “We’re going to take you off of this and you’re just going to stay in this bed. We’re going to hope for the best. I think you’re going to be fine still, so we’re going to take you off and just see what happens.” I’m like, “Okay. Sounds good.” So that was Thursday mid-morningish. My husband and my father-in-law left to go get some lunch. My husband had not left my side for two and a half days and he was like, “I need to get out. Let’s go get some lunch.”So they left. My mother-in-law and my sister-in-law stayed there with me. She was only like, how old was my sister-in-law at the time? She’s 16 now. My girl is 4. So she was probably 12. Am I doing that math right? Yeah, 12. Anyway, so they were there with me and after they took me off the medication, my contractions got really strong and really close again really fast. I called my husband and I said, “Hey, I don’t know what’s going on, but you might want to get back here. I’m not sure what’s happening.” I told my nurse a couple of different times, “Hey, things are getting more intense. It’s getting close together. Can you go get the doctor and have him check me?” She kept saying, “Oh no, you’re fine. You’re not going to progress as fast after being on all of those meds for a couple of days. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.” Well, I knew it wasn’t fine. Finally, I got pushy enough and said, “Please go get the doctor.” So finally, she went and got the doctor. He came in and mind you, I didn’t have any pain medication or anything at this point because we didn’t know what was going on. Meagan: Right, right. Kayana: So I’m just laboring through all of this unmedicated. He comes in and he checks me. He says, “Oh my gosh. You’re at a 9. I see your baby’s bum.” Meagan: Oh, oh. Kayana: She was bum down. She was bum down, so he said, “You’re at a 9. I see your baby’s bum. This baby’s coming.” He looked at the nurse and said, “Prepare the OR now.” It felt like seconds. Everybody ran in and I got whisked away to the OR. Luckily, my husband was back by then. They brought me in there and as they were wheeling me to the OR, I got hit with the biggest panic attack. That was my first time ever experiencing something like that. I don’t think that I have, I don’t know, diagnosed anxiety. I’ve never had a panic attack before. I’ve never had one since, but something about the way it was all going down and the way it was happening so quickly, and I was in pain from laboring, just everything all together was the perfect storm and I had a panic attack. I could not breathe. I thought I was suffocating. I thought that the world was just crashing down on me. I just, yeah. It was bad. I couldn’t breathe. They got me into the OR and they put me on the table to try to get the spinal block in for my C-section. I could not get in the correct position for that spinal block because of course like I said, I’m laboring through these contractions.Meagan: 9 centimeters. Kayana: At a 9 and trying to get in this very, very specific crouched position all while literally feeling like I could not breathe. Nothing I was doing– I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get air, so I just couldn’t get in the position. Obviously, it was a pretty intense situation. Everybody in the room was feeling it. The anesthesiologist was yelling at me, “I need you to do this! I need you to do this! Come on!” trying to show me, and I couldn’t do it. All of a sudden, this nurse walks over to me, and still to this day, I think she is one of my angels. She was so sweet. I’m sure that she will never hear this. I don’t know if she listens to this podcast, but Sheena, shout out to Sheena if you ever hear this. You are my angel. She came right up to me. She put her hands on my shoulders. She put her forehead to mine and looked me in the eyes. She said, “Just breathe with me. We’re just going to sit here and we’re going to breathe. I’m going to help you through this.” We just stared into each other’s eyes. She helped me get some deep breaths. She helped me calm down. She helped me stop shaking and they were able to get the spinal block in me. There were so many tender mercies and miracles along the way, but that was definitely one of them. They got that spinal block in and literally what felt, I’m sure was more than ten seconds, but what felt like ten seconds later, I heard my baby girl crying and she was here. She did well. She actually scored very well on the, is it called APGAR?Meagan: Mhmm, APGAR, mhmm. Kayana: Yeah, so she actually scored pretty well on that especially for being 9 weeks early, but obviously, they still had to whisk her away to the NICU. There was a whole team in the room just for her and a whole team in the room for me. They pulled her out of me and brought her around to my head. I didn’t get to hold her, didn’t get to touch her. All I got was to see her. I got one quick, little glance. They said, “Here’s your baby,” and they took her away. Meagan: They just didn’t say anything about anything or they just took her?Kayana: No, I knew nothing.Meagan: That’s so hard. Kayana: They took her. They whisked her off to the NICU. That was absolutely excruciating. To not know after all of that I mean, I heard her cry. Meagan: I’m assuming because she was early. Kayana: Yes, yes. So I knew she was at least alive at that point, but I didn’t know if she would be breathing because preemies lungs aren’t great. I didn’t know anything. I had told my husband before any of this happened, I said, “No matter what happens with me, I want you to go with the baby. You go. You go be in the NICU. You go be with her. Make sure she’s okay and I’ll be fine.” He listened to me. He respected that and he went with her to the NICU. So I knew that she would be watched over and taken care of by him at least, but it was so hard not to be able to, you know, I wanted that skin-to-skin and after trying so hard for so long to get her, she was finally here, but she wasn’t here with me. That was really, really hard to swallow. They finished with my C-section, took me to recovery, and if I remember correctly, it wasn’t until that next day that they allowed me to go into the NICU and go see her. So that was really, really hard. I had talked to my husband since. I had talked to him throughout the night and stuff. He was back and forth between my room and the NICU checking in on both of us, so he was giving me updates. I at least knew everything was okay, but it was so hard not to be able to actually go in, see her, and be with her until that next day. So yeah. That was it with my C-section story. She ended up being in the NICU for 5 weeks which was actually amazing because they told us to plan on her being there at least until her due date if not longer. That would have been 9 weeks or longer and she was only there for 5 weeks. That was such a miracle. She progressed really well and she did great in the NICU. She was able to go home about a month before her due date, so it was kind of special. I just got her for a little longer than I would have otherwise, so that was great. Meagan: Yeah. It’s just a journey. It’s a long time hanging out in the hospital doing all of those things, and then boom. It’s crazy that they didn’t know baby was breech before too. Kayana: Well, I think they did. I think they did because they had done an ultrasound and stuff when I had come in. They did know that she was breech, but I think it just all happened so fast and everything was crazy. Meagan: Gotcha, gotcha. Kayana: If I remember correctly, and obviously it’s all a blur especially now that it’s been a while, but I feel like I remember them trying to flip her and stuff too for those couple of days while I was in there. They did, what is that called where they use their hands? Meagan: Oh, maybe I missed that. Okay.Kayana: But it didn’t work. She was still bum down. Meagan: Still bum down, yeah. Kayana: Yep, yep. So anyway. Yeah, that was kind of the reasoning for the C-section. Meagan: Mhmm, yeah.Kayana: I didn’t really know at that point. I was just along for the ride. I wasn’t as educated in birth or different things, so I didn’t really do much to, “Oh, maybe we could try Spinning Babies,” or all of the things that I know now from listening to your podcast, thank you very much. But yeah, so I kind of just went with it. I was like, “Okay, it’s a C-section. I guess there’s nothing we can do.”Meagan: Yeah, mhmm. Kayana: Just naive. So then when my daughter was 18 months old, we ended up moving back to Idaho, woot woot! So happy. We love our Idaho. Meagan: And your supportive provider that you loved. Kayana: Yes, exactly. I was back to that doctor and right after she turned 2, we decided to try again with IVF. That summer, the summer she turned 2, we did IVF again. We got pregnant with that and ended up miscarrying with that baby which was super, super hard. Miscarriage is its own– it’s super hard. Such a difficult thing to go through. We’re very religious so that obviously helped to know and have the testimonies that we do about families, but it’s still hard. It’s hard regardless and especially, too, after going through IVF to get that baby and spending all of that money, all of that energy, all of that physical strain that that is, and then to have that literally just go down the toilet very literally, that was really hard. So after that happened, we planned on waiting a little while and taking a break just for the financial strain as well as the emotion. I felt like I needed to heal emotionally, heal physically, and give my body some time before going through the whole process of IVF again because it’s a lot to go through. We felt like we wanted to wait a little bit. We felt very strongly one day that we needed to just go for it again, not wait, and just dive right back into another round of IVF. We figured out how to make it work financially. We pulled up our boots and just went for it again. We ended up transferring another embryo in very, very early November of 2020. Yeah, November 2020. It was Election Day. Meagan: I was going to say, right before the craziness started happening or I guess at the end. It was already crazy and then it was getting really crazy. Kayana: Yeah, exactly. It was November 3rd, 2020 when we transferred our sweet little baby boy. That obviously resulted in a pregnancy and would result in our sweet baby boy that just turned one. So with this pregnancy, we decided to take some precautions due to my history of preterm birth. We were back to my doctor in Idaho which we were so happy about because we just love him. He was supportive of a VBAC from the very beginning. Actually, I think before we even did IVF again and got pregnant, we had talked to him. I had asked him, “Hey, can I have a vaginal birth after this happened?” He said, “Absolutely.” He was confident in my ability to do it. He was confident in his ability to help. He said, “If that’s what you want and if that’s what you feel like you can do and you want to do, then let’s do it. What’s stopping us?” He’s like, “We’ll watch things carefully. We’ll make sure you’re safe and that the baby’s safe. Obviously, if things don’t go as planned, we can reevaluate and be open-minded.” But he was like, “Let’s go for it. Why not?”Meagan: I love that. Kayana: And I love him. I love him for that. He’s just the best. We love him so much. So yeah. He was supportive of it from the beginning. Meagan: Do you feel like you could share his name?Kayana: Yeah, sure. He’s in Idaho Falls. His name is Dr. Leavitt, Dr. Glenn Leavitt at Leavitt Women’s Healthcare. He has other providers at his clinic and all of the ones I have seen are all really, really good but I obviously have a special place in my heart for him. Meagan: Awesome. I’ll nail him down. Kayana: Yeah, he’s really good. He has midwives there as well. They were always very kind and very supportive as well. So yeah, he’s great. He’s in Idaho Falls and he’s a little bit of a drive for us. We had to drive about 40 minutes for each appointment with him, but it was so worth it to us. So yes. We decided to do some precautions. Since we didn’t really know what had caused the preterm labor with my daughter, we didn’t know if it was an incompetent cervix or if it was just random labor. We didn’t know what it was, so we decided to do a cerclage as well as progesterone shots just to cover all of our bases and that’s what my doctor felt good about as well. At 14 weeks, I went in for a cerclage and that went really smoothly, no complaints there. I don’t feel like it was even any sort of recovery. He told me that it would probably be a couple of days that I would be down and need to rest, but I felt great. I don’t know. I know that’s probably not everyone’s experience, but the cerclage was very uneventful for me. Meagan: That’s awesome. Kayana: Yeah, it was good. But then at 20 weeks, I started having very strong contractions that were consistent and did not feel right. I ended up zooming down to his office that day. We had originally planned to start the progesterone shots around 28 weeks, but because I was having contractions at 20 which obviously is not good at all, he had me start the progesterone shots at that point. So I started them at 20 weeks. That was just weekly. Just once a week, which is not too bad honestly. You have to do progesterone and stuff up until about 12 weeks with IVF, so I got a little break for a little while before I started again at 20 weeks so that was great. The IVF ones are daily, so once a week was not bad at all. It was just in my back right on the back of my love handle above my hip. We started that. Everything else was pretty uneventful. I stayed on the shots and things went well. I hit 35 weeks and the cerclage came out and the shots stopped at that point. We had no idea what was going to happen after that. Obviously, since I had gone into labor so early before, we didn’t know if we should expect that I would go into labor that day that the cerclage came out if it would be another 5 weeks, or another however long. We just didn’t know. But I did know that I wanted an unmedicated VBAC with no interventions. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to go into labor on my own with no interventions, unmedicated, and push that baby out of my vagina. That’s what I wanted. We just played the waiting game at that point. I had gotten my heart set on maybe having baby at 37 or 36 weeks just because I had the girl so early. Meagan: Right. Kayana: But it didn’t happen and it didn’t happen. I went in for my appointment at 39 weeks on the day that I turned 39 weeks and had the ultrasound. My fluid was very, very low. It was below the safe range that it should be. That was obviously a concern. My doctor recommended, “Hey, maybe we should induce you. I know that you don’t want to do that. I know you are trying to avoid interventions and do everything as naturally as possible.” But he said, “This could be dangerous where the fluid is so low.” This was a Thursday, so he said, “We have some options.” He said, “We can induce you today if that’s what you decide that’s what you want to do,” or he said, “We can wait through the weekend and have you come in first thing Monday morning and check again and see how things are going.” He’s like, “Honestly, you could go into labor over the weekend or you could come on Monday and we will see what happens and reevaluate then.”He said, “Basically, just go home. Pray about it. Talk to your husband. Make a decision and call me and let me know what you want to do.” So I said, “Okay.” I left his office obviously very flustered, upset, worried, and stressed trying to decide what was going to be the best decision to do because like I said, I wanted to avoid induction because I knew just from listening to you guys and from the research that I had done that the fewer interventions you do, the more likely you are to be able to accomplish that VBAC and avoid another Cesarean. I was kind of a wreck on that 40-minute drive home trying to decide. I was praying and like I mentioned earlier, we are very religious. We believe in personal revelation from God and that He’ll help you make big decisions like that. I called my husband. We talked about it. I was crying. I hung up with him and prayed some more. I just felt very, very strongly that we needed to go ahead and get induced that day. Even though that wasn’t what I wanted, I knew that was what we needed to do and that’s what was going to be the best decision for us, for me, and for my baby. So I got home. My husband and I confirmed with each other that he had gotten that answer as well through his prayers. We called my doctor and said, “Okay. We will see you tonight.” We made the arrangements. We got our daughter all situated with my amazing mother-in-law that watched her for us while we were there at the hospital. We made sure that everything was ready to go with our bags and headed to the hospital. Oh yeah. So another thing was that we had the hospital that we wanted to go to for the birth. It was a smaller hospital, a little bit newer. It was more naturally minded which was the kind of thing that I like and prefer. So we wanted to go there, but it turned out that they were full. There were a lot of babies being born that day, so we weren’t able to go to that hospital. We went to the other one, the bigger hospital across the street. Luckily, they were really close. They were able to get us in. They got us all checked in. That was at about 7:00 p.m. that we got there. We got us checked in, got me changed. I was only dilated to a 1 when I got to the hospital. Meagan: I was just going to ask what you were dilated to because the cerclage had been out, so I was curious if you had started dilating. Kayana: Yeah. The cerclage had been out for what was that? Four weeks at that point?Meagan: Yeah, quite a while. Kayana: It came out at 35 and it was the day I turned 39, so it had been out for 4 weeks. Like I said, we expected to go early again, as I had before, once it was out, but my body just had different plans. I was only at a 1 when I got there. They started me on Pitocin around 8:00 p.m. I walked laps around the labor and delivery floor for hours. My husband and I just walked around and around and around trying to get contractions going, but nothing was happening. I wasn’t feeling any contractions. My monitor was showing that some were happening, but they were really light. I wasn’t feeling them. So it felt a little bit discouraging and frustrating that it seemed that no progress was being made.From 8:00 up until about midnight, there was nothing. We just walked and walked trying to get things going, tried different positions and nothing was working. So at midnight, my doctor came into the room and he asked if I wanted him to go ahead and break my water manually to help things move along. I told him, “Yes. Let’s go ahead and do that. Let’s get things going. I don’t want to be here for three days.”He went ahead and broke my water. He used the crochet-hook-looking thing. Contractions started almost immediately after that. They were strong and they were progressive. They were doing their thing and they were there. Meagan: Awesome. Kayana: Yeah. They started going. That was at midnight that he broke the water and everything started moving along. I labored through the night just to try different positions and different natural coping mechanisms that I had read about and learned about beforehand. I had my husband do the hip counterpressure on me. I ended up laboring in a hot shower for a little while with the water running on my back which felt amazing, just lots of walking, changing positions, bouncing on the ball, you know, all of that fun jazz. Obviously, it got more and more intense as the night went on. We’ll talk about my doula at the end, but my doula didn’t show– spoiler alert. She did not show up, but luckily my nurse that I had was a little bit older and she was very naturally minded which was such a blessing. She knew a lot of tips and tricks for helping with labor and different positioning. She was all for it, so that was a big blessing to be able to have her show me things and try different things with me to help with the pain management because I really, really wanted to go unmediated and not get an epidural. So it was a blessing that she had that naturally minded attitude and was able to help me with things. So midnight, broke water, and things started. By 6:00 a.m., I was fully dilated. I did have a little bit of a lip. They said that I was good to go to start pushing which, looking back, I think, was a little premature. I wish that I would have waited until I had the urge myself and felt that need. Lesson learned for next time but in the moment, sometimes you’re just going for it. You’re just in your own world and it didn’t even cross my mind. I knew beforehand that I should wait for the urge to push. I had read, done the research, and listened to so many episodes from you guys. I knew that I should wait, but in the moment, I guess I kind of just forgot. I was just trying to get done, get through it, be done with the pain, and get my baby here. It just kind of went over my head. I should have waited, but I started pushing when they told me to. I did have a little bit of a lip. It ended up that I had to push for about two hours. The baby kept getting, not getting stuck necessarily, but it kept hitting against my pelvic bone and he was just having a hard time getting out. I was having a hard time pushing. I was just so exhausted from labor and everything. So I pushed for two hours which was so hard. Honestly, having that being my first time ever pushing a baby out, I was shocked at how hard the pushing part was. It was amazing, but it was hard. I felt like it was harder than the pain of labor and getting to that point. Not more painful, it wasn’t painful for me, it was just hard. It was not something I was expecting. I pushed for two hours and ended up needing a small episiotomy which, again, my doctor was so respectful and so good about everything. He did ask before it, “Hey, is it okay if I give you just a little episiotomy just to help get this baby out?” So he did that and baby pushed out at exactly 8:00 a.m.Meagan: Oh my goodness. Kayana: It was the most amazing moment of my life. I still get emotional just thinking about it, just that feeling of pushing that baby out of me and being able to have that immediate skin-to-skin that I had wanted so badly and wasn’t able to have with my daughter. I just waited and waited so long, it felt like, to be able to have a brand new, fresh baby boy on my chest. Sorry. Meagan: You’re fine. Kayana: It was the most amazing feeling. He was so perfect and so beautiful. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever felt. I felt so whole and just so healed from that previous experience. I couldn’t stop crying. I felt like I was crying and smiling and laughing all at the same time. I just couldn’t stop. My husband was there, obviously, by my side and he was so happy too. I just kept saying over and over again– all I could think to say was, “We did it. He’s here. He’s here. We did it. I can’t believe we did it. He’s here.” Just over and over, “He’s here. We did it. We did it.” It was just amazing. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Kayana: Yeah, he was here. He was safe. He was healthy. I had my baby boy with me. I had accomplished my VBAC and I was so proud. Meagan: You should be. Kayana: I was. I was so proud. I still am. We enjoyed a few blissful moments of that before I noticed the energy in the room completely shifted. My doctor is very, very confident. He’s very experienced and I’ve never really seen him worry too much, but I could tell by his face that he was a little bit worried and something was going on. Everyone started rushing around me. Nurses were putting all of their weight on my stomach trying to push on it. It turned out I was hemorrhaging really, really badly. I think at least the explanation I remember getting, was just that my body was super worn out from pushing for so long to try to get the baby out that it kind of just exhausted itself and had a hard time delivering the placenta. The doctor ended up elbow deep inside of me trying to pull things out. That didn’t help. I was still bleeding, so I ended up with an emergency D&C while laying on the bed completely unmedicated. Meagan: Yeah, I was going to say whoa. I’m sure that was intense. Kayana: Had the little metal scraper and everything, you know, casually performing a D&C on me. He ended up having to do that twice, so I ended up having a double emergency D&C laying there unmedicated. It was absolutely excruciating. Literally, the only thing keeping me calm through all of this was that sweet baby boy on my chest. I just held onto him and just tried to stay as calm as I could while I was going through all of this pain and these D&Cs and everything going on. My husband was obviously very, very freaked out, nervous, and didn’t know what to think. He was obviously very worried about what was going to happen to me, but that baby kept me calm. I was able to get through that. They finally, after the second D&C, were able to get the bleeding to stop, and get the placenta fully delivered. But through all that, I lost about twice the amount of blood as you would in a normal vaginal delivery is what they said. I believe, if I remember right, it was about 1 liter of blood that I lost. Meagan: Wow, that’s a lot. Kayana: Yeah, kind of scary. I was exhausted for quite a while after that. I didn’t really realize. I was out of it a little bit. I was naive thinking, “Oh yeah, I just pushed a baby out. That’s why I feel like crap,” but I think that a lot of it was the fact that I had lost so much blood and didn’t really realize in the moment how big of a deal it had really been until after the fact and after my husband was telling me everything that had happened days later, going through everything with me, and telling me how scary it really was. I did end up having to get some bags of blood and have a transfusion. I had to stay in the hospital an extra day just to make sure that things were good. Meagan: You were okay, yeah. Kayana: Yeah, but we came home two days later. My induction was Thursday night, baby boy was born Friday morning, and we brought him home Sunday afternoon. And yeah. That’s my story. My recovery from my VBAC was absolutely incredible. Obviously, I was sore down there for a while which is to be expected and I did have some stitches from the episiotomy that had to heal, but overall, I felt like the recovery went really smoothly and I felt really great. I was just on cloud 9 through it all and didn’t really think much of the soreness and the pain that was going on because at least it wasn’t a C-section I was recovering from again. Meagan: Right. Kayana: So yeah. Anyway, that’s it. Meagan: Oh, that’s beautiful. I’m so happy for you. I get tingles in my nose when I get emotional. Have you ever felt that? Kayana: Yes. Meagan: I get a little tingle in my nose and I was like, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” You can just tell. You should be so proud of yourself and so happy for yourself. I’m sorry that you did have a postpartum hemorrhage and it does happen sometimes after long deliveries or long births. You were contracting even early on, so your uterus could have just been like you said, tired. So I’m just so happy for you. Kayana: Yeah. Meagan: I want to talk about two things before I let you go. I know you’re on your road trip and your family probably needs you back, but one of the things that we have a lot of people be told is that they cannot have a VBAC or that they do not qualify because their C-section baby was preterm. Kayana: Really? Meagan: Yes, yes. We actually have some of our stories on the podcast who have been told, “No, because you had a preterm C-section.” Kayana: Why would that even correlate? I don’t know know why that would mean anything. Meagan: Well, the uterus wasn’t as stretched out as it would have been full-term. I mean, there are reasons. It’s so hard. When you hear that, you’re like, “I don’t want to do something that’s bad.” But I do have a study to share here and it says that out of 131 women that had previous pregnancies, 93 of them went on to have a TOLAC or a trial of labor, and 80 of them actually did achieve a VBAC. That’s still a pretty great percentage. Kayana: That’s amazing. Meagan: 86% of people who went for the trial of labor to have a VBAC ended up with a VBAC, but there are so many times where people are told that they cannot or it is absolutely unreasonable to even consider it when it is technically possible. So I would say to definitely follow up with your provider of course. Know your options. Learn more. Everyone has a unique situation, but your provider didn’t even question it. It was like, “No, we’re good. Why would we not?”We do have a blog. It’s a shorter blog, but VBAC After Preterm C-section, so if you’re in that category, go check that out. Last but not least, I know you mentioned your doula, unfortunately, didn’t show up which breaks my heart. Doulas are incredible and we love doulas. Obviously, we have a whole bunch of VBAC doulas but here in our own directory on thevbaclink.com/findadoula. They are amazing and we advocate for them. However, I wanted to just point out that as seen here, it is still possible to VBAC without a doula. Yes, we encourage them. We think they are amazing and they bring a lot of powerful education, but this is still possible. So what happened? I’m so sorry that did happen. Kayana: Oh, I hate to end it on a negative note after all of that high and beautiful VBAC story. Meagan: We don’t even have to. We don’t even have to. Kayana: I guess the gist of it– pretty early on in my pregnancy, I did decide to hire a doula. I really felt that it would be a beneficial thing. Like I had mentioned multiple times while I’ve been talking, I had listened to your podcast so much and heard so many wonderful positive, beautiful stories about doulas and how amazing they are, and then of course you and Julie. I felt like, “Oh, doulas are so amazing. I want one so badly.” I felt like I did some really good research and found one in my area. I did interview her before hiring her. We met up and went to lunch. It really seemed like we vibed. It felt like she was the right match and a good choice for me. I ended up hiring her and the closer we got to my delivery, we stayed in contact and had our plans. She checked in with me occasionally and checked how things were going. The day that we ended up having the induction, she was involved a little bit in that decision. I had called her. She was one of the phone calls I had made when I was trying to decide, and praying, and had talked to my husband about it. She knew that it was going to be a very likely possibility that I was going to be induced that day. She had planned on leaving on a vacation two or three days later after. That was her plan. She had been transparent with me about that and told me that. That was fine, but then after I told her my decision that I had decided that I needed to go in and get induced that day, she went ahead and let me know that she had decided to leave three days early for her vacation, that she was leaving that day, and that she would not be there at my birth. Meagan: Oh no. Did she not have a backup or anything? Kayana: She said, “I have a backup. I’m going to send my backup,” which, okay. That makes sense but also was kind of thrown on me. I had never met this backup because I wasn’t really expecting her to just up and leave on the day of my induction. I hadn’t ever met this doula. I was not as comfortable with her and just didn’t know her. I didn’t know what to expect. I did end up calling her, the backup doula, while I was on my way to the hospital. She said, “Okay. You go get checked in. Get everything going. I’m going to take just a small little nap and then I will come when I wake up.” I said, “Okay, sounds good.” I let her know what hospital I was in and I figured she would take maybe a one or two-hour nap. I don’t know. She said she was going to take a little nap and come to the hospital, and she never came. Meagan: Aww. Kayana: I labored all through the night and kept expecting her to show up and be there, and she just never came. It ended up that I still had to pay my original doula in full for her services that I did not receive. I don’t know. I just felt very betrayed, very sad, and upset about that whole situation. I don’t know what happened and I don’t know. Just not a great experience and I’m sad because I feel like I hear so many positive, beautiful experiences about having such wonderful doulas and it just wasn’t mine, but that’s okay. Like I said, I’m still grateful that I was still able to have my VBAC despite that happening and that I had a very supportive nurse who was very knowledgeable in probably a lot of the same things that a doula would be. She stepped in and acted as that for me. Things were good still. It still worked out, so I’m just grateful for that. Meagan: Good. I’m so glad. I’m sorry that happened for sure. Kayana: But anyway. Yeah, kind of crazy. Meagan: Well, if you are listening and you are looking for a VBAC doula like I said before, we do have VBAC doulas. They are amazing. I love them so much. You can find them at thevbaclink.com/findadoula. I’m so sorry that you had that experience, but I’m so happy and proud of you for having the beautiful birth that you desired despite all of the crazy things along the way, all the shots, and the cerclage, and the contractions early on, everything. You powerhoused through it and I just wanted to say congrats. Kayana: Aww, thank you so much, Meagan. You are so sweet. This has been fun. I’ve been so excited. You have no idea how honored I feel that you asked me to share my story. I’m so happy and I hope that at least one small aspect of it may help some other moms on their journey. That’s all I can ask for. I just hope that it lifts someone up and helps someone else along the way. Meagan: It absolutely will. All of these stories are just amazing. I really appreciate all of you who submit your stories to share content. We actually are sharing content now both on our podcast and on social media because people want more stories, more and more stories. Hopefully, we’ll be able to bring some more podcasts in a week but now we’re one a week. So if you’re out there listening and you really want to share your story, please email us your story or email us what to do and we will get that in, or you can just go online and submit your story both via social media and podcast. We will get those shared because really, there are so many people out there just like you were, I’m sure, wanting to hear these incredible stories. Now here you are, one of them, sharing with all of the listeners all over the world and I know you’re going to inspire. Kayana: Thank you so much. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share. 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