Episode 218 Eve's VBAC + IUGR

Here at The VBAC Link, we often talk about how to VBAC with a big baby, but what about the tiny ones? When Eve received an IUGR diagnosis with her first baby, she was no longer able to birth at her desired birth center. A medically necessary induction occurred soon after which then led to one unwanted intervention after another. Finally, her baby boy was born via an emergency C-section and was admitted to the NICU.Nothing about her first birth experience went as planned. Eve’s second baby was also measuring very small, but she was able to avoid an IUGR diagnosis. Everything about her second birth experience was different than the first…in all of the best ways!Additional LinksEve’s WebsiteEve’s Instagram: @get.creative.wellnessHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Good morning, everybody. This is Meagan with The VBAC Link and we are here today with our friend, Eve. She is amazing. All of you guys are amazing. We love you all and are excited to hear her story and a little bit more about what she does. I’m kind of excited to pick her brain a little bit about what she does as a profession. She is an art therapist and a mental health counselor. As you know, in the VBAC world, there is a lot of– well in the whole world, there is a lot of mental health. Mental health is a crisis. Eve, I don’t know if you would agree, but I feel like we are in a mental health crisis right now, and sometimes right after birth whether it be the birth that you wanted or not even that you wanted, with both, we can have struggles and we also know that through birth and postpartum and all of the things that mental health is a big, important factor. So I’m excited to talk more with her about that and of course to hear her share her story. Review of the WeekMeagan: We have a Review of the Week first and this is from Anne. She says, “These ladies are an absolute joy to listen to on their podcast. I feel so fortunate to have found them on my journey to what will hopefully be 2VBAC” which means a second VBAC “with twins.” That’s awesome.“When I had my first VBAC, I felt educated as I had read through books and websites. Now, I feel empowered thanks to Julie and Meagan. I feel more confident advocating for myself and asking the right questions. I recommend you to all of the mamas I come across in the VBAC groups and often refer to specific episodes I’ve listened to. Thank you for all that you do, you women of strength you!”I love that. I love that. That is something that we totally encourage. This podcast, although it’s VBAC-specific, can really benefit anybody listening to it. So a first-time mom can learn how to avoid the C-section, learn how to advocate for herself, learn how to find a supportive provider, all of these things for first, second, third time, and fourth-time moms. Whether you are a C-section mom or not, it’s going to benefit you. Eve’s stories Meagan: Okay, Eve. First off, I wanted to just say thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to be here with us and I also really want to dive into a little bit of what you do before we get into your story. Can you tell us a little bit more about art therapy? What is an art therapist? What do you do because you wrote a little bit in the form that you sent us and I was like, “Okay, this is awesome.” So share more with us. Eve: Sure. Thank you so much for having me first of all. This is such a privilege and I feel like this is the icing on the cake to my whole experience so just thank you. So as an art therapist and a counselor, I provide traditional talk therapy, but there is an extra spin on it because I invite the creative process into the work I do with my clients. So sometimes we have traumatic experiences as a lot of listeners have had and I myself have had, and sometimes that trauma makes it really difficult to speak about the things that happened to us to be able to move forward. That’s just one example of a reason why doing some of the creative could really help you to draw out some of those emotions and make it a little easier to speak about it or just to get some of that off of your chest by putting it out onto paper or making something out of clay or even through movement. There are a lot of different ways that creativity can be expressed, but for the things that are really challenging to speak on, the creative process can be really wonderful to help benefit clients. So what I do, my specialty is using the creative process one-on-one with clients, but I also have recently launched a new part of my program which is doing professional development with companies and also community groups who believe that they want to bring more self-care into their worlds. What I would do is I would come in, I’d do a mental health wellness piece, whatever feels relevant to that group, and then we will do a related art project and talk about how that went so that they can deepen the experience and learn a bit more about themselves and hopefully bring some of those tools into their lives for their own self-care on a regular basis.Meagan: Wow, I love that. So you have a course. Did you create the course or is this a collaborative thing?Eve: Yeah, it’s all me. This is something new that I’m just launching. I’m really excited to share it. I have done professional development in other ways and I wanted to bring my creativity and my passion for art therapy to the general population, so this is for people who are not just interested in therapy, but people who want to deepen their self-care and gain some more self-awareness and hopefully find some better ways to relax. Meagan: Gosh, I love that. That is so awesome. Do you mind plugging in your website? Will you tell everybody about your website? And then we’re going to have that in the show notes for you as well, listeners.Eve: Sure. Absolutely, yep. It’s getcreativewellness.com and I will drop it into the chat right now so you can see it. Meagan: Awesome, awesome. And you are on Instagram as well, right? Eve: Yes, yes. Meagan: It’s @get.creative.wellness so definitely check her out. Awesome. Is there anything else you’d like to share about mental health?Eve: No, just that it’s something that applies to everybody and not to let it go if you sense that something is off with you. Definitely follow your instinct and don’t let it go because the longer you let it go, the more it will take over your life and be harder to come out of. So it’s really important not to keep pushing through some of these mental health challenges that we have because sometimes it’s a lot more than just day-to-day stress and we really don’t want to let these things build up inside of us. It really affects all of the things that we do. I mean overall, I think that moms tend to put themselves last a lot and self-care is really not selfish. It’s really something that is necessary in order to be the best mothers and partners and daughters and all of the other roles.Meagan: Person, the best person that you can be. You’ve got to be well-balanced. It’s okay if you’re unbalanced. That’s okay too. It happens. Eve: Exactly, yeah. Meagan: It’s okay to take charge of your care. So I love that message. Eve: Thank you. Meagan: Okay, well let’s dive into your story because you have a lot of things in your story as far as an induction that didn’t go as planned, IUGR (intrauterine growth restrictions), baby in the NICU, so you’ve got all of these little things that are unique, so I would love for you to share. Eve: Thanks. I was really excited to share my story because I’ve listened to so many episodes and I know I hear a lot of stories about big babies, so I’ve always listened and been like, “Are there any episodes on small babies?” because that has been my experience with both of my babies. They both were a little bit different, so I’m excited to share and hopefully, it will help some other people who might be experiencing something similar. All right, so I will start with my first pregnancy. My husband and I were married for about a year and we figured if we were going to start a family, we should probably get on that because I was 35 and we didn’t know what that journey might look like for us. So we figured we would give it a shot. We were fortunate to be pregnant very quickly. We said, “Okay. We’re really doing this now.” So we had planned for a natural birth at a birth center. I tend to be very natural and holistic-minded in everything I do in life, so that was a no-brainer for me that I really wanted an out-of-hospital birth if possible. I really never gave much consideration to other possibilities because I didn’t realize how often interventions are pushed and the frequency of other outcomes. I thought a C-section of a hospital transfer would only happen if I was in labor and something went wrong and we would have to go that route. I really didn’t think about any other ways that you might end up with a C-section. I thought that we were going to have this birth at the birth center. My pregnancy was fairly easy and comfortable. I took very good care of myself. I was eating well. I gained the right amount of weight that was recommended. I was doing chiropractic my entire pregnancy and also before that, I had been in chiropractic care for many years so I just continued with that through my pregnancy. I was exercising a lot, a lot of walking and doing some light weights and yoga. I was drinking red raspberry leaf tea. Just in general, I felt really great throughout, so I had no inkling of, “Oh, this is not going to happen for me.” We went for our anatomy scan at 19 weeks and there were some concerns with the size. I believe at the time, my son was measuring at about the 12th percentile. They also saw that I had complete placenta preva, so I was recommended to come back again to check in the 3rd trimester to make sure the previa had cleared and do another growth scan. I came back at 28 weeks and the previa had cleared, so I was good to go with that, and then I was also very thankful that the weight was now measuring around the 23rd percentile I believe, so I said, “Okay. We’re in the clear.” I didn’t have any more scans. At 40 weeks, I got to my 40-week appointment. I should mention that I still continued to feel great throughout. In fact, now looking back, maybe I felt a little too comfortable towards the end of my pregnancy but at 40 weeks, I was still pregnant, so I went to my appointment and I had a cervical check. I was hard and closed and the midwife there said, “There’s a strong chance that you’ll still be pregnant next week.” She said that I should go get my amniotic fluid levels checked. So I did that at 41 weeks. My fluid levels were fine and the blood flow to and from the placenta looked good. Everything was looking pretty good. However, the baby was measuring small. I had to go to a hospital to get these scans done since I was having my care at a birth center and they didn’t do these tests there. So the doctor at the hospital who read my scan recommended that I induce that day. They said, “Your baby is estimated at weighing 6 pounds, 13 ounces and that would be considered IUGR for a 41-week pregnancy.” But to me, I felt like, “Well, 6 pounds 13 ounces. I’m only 5’3”. My husband’s not that tall.” That probably sounded like a decent-sized baby for us to have. So I declined the induction and I called the midwives and they had me come in that day to the birth center. I remember being very awkward because the office was closing soon, so the lights were out in a lot of the office and they sort of took me into this one room that was still open. So already, it was kind of an eerie feeling just being there at that time of day. I think it was maybe 6:00 or so. They had me come in and do a non-stress test and a membrane sweep. They had three different people try to put in a Foley balloon, but they couldn’t get it in so that was really probably the first time that I started feeling like I was being experimented on because it was like all of these people trying to do this thing which was really vulnerable because I also never had that done to me before. But I was willing to try anything because I really didn’t want to be induced and I was still hoping at this point that I could deliver at the birth center. However, while I was getting my non-stress test and they were telling me, “Oh, everything is good,” they also dropped the ball on me that I was now considered high-risk with my pregnancy and I couldn’t deliver at the birth center because now my baby had this IUGR diagnosis. That was really difficult to accept because I was really pumped about having these natural childbirth classes and I was reading all of the books. Meagan: You were ready, yeah. Eve: I was ready. I was ready and I really believed wholeheartedly that this was the type of birth that I wanted and that this was going to be possible for me. I really had no thought in my mind that this was not going to happen to me. I felt like if I willed it, it would be so which I obviously realize now is foolish or maybe just naive, but I think that that’s a big part of my story is feeling like a failure because I didn’t get the things that I hoped for. I know that there were people along the way who questioned my choice to deliver at a birth center and the fact that I wanted everything to be natural and I had this feeling that people would say, “See? See? You can’t just go in and do that.” So I already was sort of feeling a bit like I failed because now I was going to have to deliver in a hospital. Part of me was also angry because I didn’t even know that they were going to be measuring the baby at that time. I thought I was just getting my amniotic fluid levels checked and I didn’t give consent to do any other testing and then they just came in and they were like, “The baby is measuring small.” So I was angry because I said, “Well, what if it’s wrong? What if the baby is really 7 pounds, 13 ounces?” With that being said, at this point, I was 41 weeks and I finally decided to stop working. I was working all throughout and I was showing up to work every day and people were saying, “Why are you still here? You’re still pregnant? Why are you still here?” That was also getting frustrating because I knew that the baby should be coming soon, but I was frustrated too, and to have people just point it out to me wasn’t really that helpful. So I decided to stop working and at that point, I was being pressured to be induced not in a harsh way, but I was getting a lot of phone calls daily from the midwives at the birth center saying, “Are you feeling anything? Do you think that anything’s happening?” I had to go for daily non-stress tests and I had all of them passed, but I felt very pressured to go into labor on my own to avoid the induction, so I told myself, “Well, at least if I have to have a hospital birth, if I could somehow get something going without an induction, maybe I could still have somewhat of a natural birth experience.” I had no education on this at all. This was not anything I had even considered, so now in the last week of my pregnancy, I was trying all of these natural induction methods so I was doing evening primrose oil and eating pineapple and walking a bunch even though I was already walking. I was just increasing that. I did acupuncture a couple of times. I had a couple of membrane sweeps and then the last thing that I tried was castor oil. That was very intense. I did have some mild contractions after taking the castor oil, but I think it was just because it was such a violent cleanse coming out both ways because then it sort of just tapered all off and didn’t turn into anything. I was getting frustrated about being encouraged to induce from my providers and even one of my family members was starting to turn in that direction. I was starting to question if I really was putting my baby at risk by staying pregnant. I agreed to induce at 41+6 and I just remember so clearly the feeling of walking into the hospital already clutching my pillow and feeling really defeated. Each step in the process felt like it was against what I wanted. I was in the hospital and every time there was an intervention proposed, I was asked if I wanted it, but I really didn’t know of any other choices and I didn’t feel good about any of the interventions that were proposed to me. I was just like, “I guess I have to go along. I don’t really think I have any other choice.” So I was very closed to the process overall and I do think that that really affected my recovery emotionally because I was so against it. I think being close-minded and wanting this really natural childbirth experience hindered me in a way because I was not open to anything else. There were a couple of things that were on my hopes and dreams list that I was able to do while at the hospital during this induction. They let me take a shower and I brought music and I brought some aromatherapy and some visual aids, but I didn’t use most of those things. The first thing that they did was they inserted Cervadil and two hours later, I remember I was talking with my husband and I started laughing and my water broke. I was like, “Oh, maybe something’s going to happen now.” I asked to wait an hour or so to see if anything would pick up because I had heard of people who once their water broke didn’t really need any other interventions and contractions just picked up on their own. That did not happen for me. After a couple of hours, they started me on a low dose of Pitocin. I remember at this point, I needed to be hooked up. Since I was now on Pitocin, I needed to be continually monitored. That was the first time where I really started to feel that I was being experimented on because I was hooked up and they didn’t have mobile monitoring at this hospital, so I had to stay tethered to the bed. I could only move about 5 feet from the bed. Meagan: That’s so hard when you’re already feeling like you’re an experiment and now you’re feeling stuck. Eve: Yeah, and also, until the very end of my pregnancy, I had a very comfortable pregnancy. I didn’t have any issues with high blood pressure or sugar issues. I felt really good, so I felt like I really didn’t want to be hooked up to things. I wanted to go to the bathroom, so I got up and I went to the bathroom. I unhooked myself and I remember one of the nurses came in and yelled at me and said, “What are you doing? You’re on Pitocin.” I was like, “I have legs and I want to use the bathroom. I don’t want to sit on this toilet right next to the bed.” So clearly, that was not allowed. I basically stayed in the bed the whole rest of the time. After about 18 hours of my water being broken and really no changes happening, I was barely dilating, I started leaking meconium. I think I might have had a mild fever. I’m a little fuzzy on it, but I think I was starting to have a fever too so when I was checked, I was only at about 3 centimeters, so the midwife who was there with me from the birth center recommended that we increase the Pitocin to try to deliver vaginally because we were really up against the clock. Those were her words. That made me feel very pressured and I was just like, “Okay. Well, I guess that’s my only choice, so okay. Let’s try it.” I agreed to get an epidural even though I was really scared and I really didn’t want it. The anesthesiologist came in and I remember she was very, very impatient. She had no empathy for the fact that I was unsure about wanting this and she said to me, “I have other people waiting, so I need you to make a decision.” So I was just like, “Okay. I guess I’ll do it.” I got the epidural. There were no issues actually placing it, but as soon as I laid back down and I started to go numb, I had a severe panic attack. I’m not really prone to panic attacks. I’ve definitely had some general anxiety and I have had some more mild panic attacks, but this was really, really bad. My teeth were chattering. I felt totally out of control and I had no feeling in my legs at all. There was one spot that didn’t take on the right side of my pelvis, so they were telling me, “Oh, you have to turn your body.” I’m like, “Well, I can’t move.” So they had to turn me. I just felt totally out of control and like I had no choices and I felt like everything just had gone from bad to worse by this point. Now they were like, “Okay, well we can’t start the Pitocin again because your heart rate is totally too high right now.” It took me about 45 minutes to finally get my heart rate to a normal level. I remember the midwife who was there came in and she started doing needlepoint right next to the bed. I remember at first being very annoyed by that, but then I was like, “Oh, I think I know what she’s doing,” because as an art therapist, I’m thinking, “Maybe she’s doing this to distract me because she wants me to be able to try to focus on something else.” So that’s what I did. I just sort of watched her. I watched her fingers as she was doing the needlepoint and that was what helped me to calm down. Finally, I said, “Okay. I’m ready. I feel calm. Let’s try putting the Pitocin back on.” So the nurses came in. They put it back on and then literally less than a minute afterward, the baby’s heart rate was not responding well. I don’t remember if it was going up or down, but it was not even a minute and they were like, “You’re coming in to have a C-section.” I will admit that in some ways because I knew the C-section was the last stop in the road, I felt relieved that there would not be any more interventions to try and fail or be coerced into without having enough information, but I also did not understand what would happen in a C-section besides that they cut you open and they take the baby out. I really had no idea what really happens in a C-section. So the same anesthesiologist comes into the room and it was just like a movie. She comes in and she goes, “I’m back.” I was like, “Are you kidding me? As if I already didn’t have ill feelings towards you from the first time.”Meagan: Thank you for announcing. Eve: Yeah. And honestly, I have no idea if this is true, but I had this feeling that she made it so heavy because I felt so drugged, I could barely hold my eyes open or form sentences after that and while having the surgery, I felt that she was kind of like, “Oh, she’s a live one. Give her a high dose.” But who knows? So I also remember at the time before we went into the OR, someone came in from the NICU who I had never met. I don’t remember if it was a physician. I don’t know who it was, but somebody from the NICU who was on the team that would be working on the baby if it was necessary came in. I remember she was holding my hand and being really syrupy sweet and saying, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of your baby.” I found it to be very inauthentic and annoying because I didn’t want to talk to her. I really just wanted peace for a few minutes and I wasn’t very welcoming of her support. I later did apologize to her for that, but the timing was not the best. I also felt like I could see through it. I felt like she was putting something on because I had never met this woman and she didn’t know me and here she was holding my hand really tight. I was like, “I didn’t really show you any signs that I needed my hand held right now.” So anyway, right before surgery, I’m laying on the table and my husband came in with me and the midwife was there next to me on the other side, so I did have their support. I remember not being able to form sentences and she said to me, “Don’t worry because sometimes people feel like they can’t breathe from the anesthesia.” I’m thinking, “I just had this massive panic attack and now you’re telling me that I might not be able to feel that I could breathe?” I tried to not let it get to me because I was like, “Well, here I am. I’m not going anywhere.” But what I did like is throughout each part of the C-section, the doctor explained what was happening. They said, “You might feel this here. You might feel a little tugging.” Every single thing that was happening they did tell me, so I felt that I was included a big in the process. But one thing I do remember was once they actually got to my son, the doctor said, “You made the right decision. This baby wasn’t coming out.” I didn’t know what that meant. That was the first time where I felt really the mom guilt like, “Did I keep him in too long? Should I have induced sooner?” type of thing. After he came out, he wasn’t crying yet and I was very drugged, so I really didn’t know what was going on. The midwife brought him around for a brief second before taking him off to the side where people were working on him. I’m assuming because they were pumping out all of the meconium. It felt like a very long time before we heard him cry. I remember thinking, “Oh, his cry sounds really cute,” even though I always hated the sound of babies crying before. I asked my husband, Mike, and I said, “Is he beautiful?” because like I said, I was really drugged. He didn’t really say anything because he wasn’t really sure what was happening. I could tell he was worried. Finally, the midwife brought him over to me and he was all wrapped up. I tried to hold him to my chest as best as I could and she said, “He’s doing well. We’re going to take him to the regular nursery” which meant to bring him to our room. I felt some relief that he was okay. He was born on the small side. He was 6 pounds, 7 ounces which might not sound super tiny, but he was also 21 inches long so he was very thin. After talking with other people after the fact, it sounds like his presentation was very typical for an IUGR baby because he had a very large head and his body was very skinny, so it’s like all of the weight and energy was going toward the brain and the areas that most needed it, so his body had lost all of that round fat, so he was very thin. I remember in his newborn pictures, you could see his ribs and that was another time when I felt some guilt like, “Did I cause this somehow?” That sort of thing. My mom and stepfather met us in recovery. My husband was the first one to spend time holding him because I really didn’t feel stable enough to hold him while being wheeled on a bed and then he was really only in the room with us for half a day because his temperature kept going down. So at one point, it had gone down to 92 degrees. He went to the nursery under the warmer a couple of times, but at the hospital where we were, apparently the third time that happens, they get sent to the NICU. After they had done the warmer a couple of times and it wasn’t working for very long, he went down to the NICU and we had so many tests run. Everything was coming back to normal. It seems like getting him to gain weight was really what was needed to get his temperature to stay in a healthy range. They were giving him a lot of formula and this was also not my plan because I wanted to exclusively breastfeed in the beginning and now he was being pumped full of all of this extra calorie formula, but I felt fine with that because I was like, “He needs to gain weight.” I didn’t really have milk coming in yet, so I just went with it. Shortly before he was discharged, I remember a NICU nurse who was there telling us that she was in the surgery. She said, “I thought for sure he would be going right to the NICU because he was covered in poop when he came out.” He was there for a week and during that time, it was really difficult to process because I was recovering from a C-section and we were in the hospital for most of that week as well, but I had a lot of disappointment and shock. I just felt very disconnected from my body. It was really hard to move and walk. I felt a lot of times like my body was just ripping in half where I had the incision if I moved the wrong way. It was just really challenging and frustrating. I also felt exhausted and very sad. I felt like I had no time to process what had happened at all. I just really felt like I got robbed of the birth experience in general. I felt like I really didn’t have the chance to experience any part of labor and that the birth experience I had hoped for was taken from me. I don’t feel that way now necessarily. I feel that certain parts could have been different, but I know that my son definitely needed some help and some extra support when he was born, so I’m accepting of that now. So the feeding schedule in the NICU was every 3 hours. We would go down. We would do a diaper change. We’d take his temperature. We’d feed him whatever breastmilk I had, then give him some formula, then we’d go back to our room. I would pump for 20 minutes to try to get some supply going and I would have a snack and then I would have people coming in and out of the room constantly all reminding me to eat and rest, but there was really no opportunity to be alone to do that, so it was very challenging to be on this really rigorous schedule after having surgery and trying to be there for my son but also not having a chance to emotionally process everything that had happened. The nurses really weren’t communicating well during changes of shifts about my medications and I was really just taking Motrin and Tylenol so it would wear off and I would be in a lot of pain because I wasn’t taking anything stronger than that, so I kept reminding them when I needed my medication and it was just very frustrating. So we spent 5 days in the hospital including Thanksgiving which was really sad because I was thankful that my son was there and that he was okay, but we also really didn’t know if he was going to be okay yet and so we had a lot of mixed feelings and it was hard to be alone in the hospital during that time. I should mention that this is before COVID by a few months, so it wasn’t that we were alone because of COVID. We were just alone because with him being in the NICU, a lot of visitors were not allowed. The nurses and doctors gave him great care. We learned a lot in that experience. We had a lot of help with breastfeeding. We learned how to change a diaper the right way and how to take his temperature. We got him on a sleep schedule right from the beginning so we did get some benefits from the NICU experience. But shortly before he was discharged, one of the nurses said, “He makes his needs known.” I remember he was one of the only full-time babies that were there and he had the loudest cry in there so I think they were ready to discharge him too because it was pretty quiet except for our son screaming, but I realized that comment that she made how fortunate we were to have a generally healthy, full-term baby who just needed to put on some weight to be able to take him home because I know a lot of families who experience the NICU have much greater challenges than what we went through, so I just want to mention that. He was long and skinny when he was born, but eventually, his growth did catch up after a few months and I worked really hard to build up my milk supply. Now, he is almost 3 and he’s smart and energetic and he just amazes me every day. I had a lot of guilt about my son’s beginning even though there was really nothing I could think of that I had done to cause it and that was hard to accept because I really wanted to have an answer. I knew I wanted some support around my recovery and I was really having trouble relating to the birth experiences of the people in my inner circle even though they were trying to be supportive because nobody really had an experience like mine. I Googled “C-section support group” and that was how I found The VBAC Link. Meagan: Oh, that’s awesome. Eve: Yeah, and I remember I was just back to work. I was about 3 months postpartum and I found the podcast. On one of my breaks, I started listening. I was like, “Oh my gosh. This is exactly what I need. I need to hear people who have stories that I can relate to and get some inspiration from that,” because I knew that I didn’t want to have a similar experience if we had another child. I also started seeing a postpartum therapist in addition to listening to the VBAC Link. I was having some past trauma come up, so I knew that I needed some more formal therapy, so I was doing that as well. And then a little over a year later, our son was 14 months and we got pregnant again but we had an early pregnancy loss. We believe I was only about 7 weeks pregnant, so we decided to wait a while to try again and process that experience. We were working on some other goals at the time, so we figured, “Let’s put having another baby on hold for a little while,” because I felt like I really needed to process that and I didn’t want to rush into it. During that pregnancy that we lost, I had started care with a midwife in our area who people have called “The VBAC Whisperer” and I thought, “Oh, she’s going to be a great fit for me,” but when I had my pregnancy loss, she had no compassion and I remember when I called because I was bleeding and I said, “Should I be alarmed?” Because she sounded a little annoyed that I called and she goes, “I don’t know. Do you want me to tell you to be alarmed?” just like that. I was like, “Um.” I was thinking that I would like some education about what I could do or some possibilities. There was nothing constructive for me to try anything. So I swore that I would never work with her again and I ended up getting much more support around that loss from the midwives at the birth center where we had gone for our prenatal care with our son. Luckily, I still had other providers that I trusted that I could reach out to. That baby’s due date was estimated to be October 8th of 2021 and we found out we were pregnant again on October 6th, 2021 a couple of days before the baby we lost would have been born. It was very meaningful to me because it made me feel like somehow the loss made way for a new life. I just held that with me. It helped me to remember the loss in a more positive and meaningful way. So I started my care at the birth center even though I knew that I couldn’t continue there because they don’t accept VBAC clients, so I ended up moving on to care with a different midwife who I had never met or worked with previously and this midwife was VBAC supportive and very trauma-informed and was able to deliver my baby at a different hospital which I had heard was more VBAC supportive. I really liked this midwife because they kept it real with me about possibilities about what to expect in a hospital setting to help me prepare to go into this birth expecting to be in a hospital because I think like I said, I was thinking all along with my first pregnancy, “I’m going to be in a birth center. It’s going to be all-natural. It’s going to be like being in a bedroom.” I hadn’t even considered, “Well, what if I end up in a hospital?” so it was helpful for me to consider some other possibilities this time around. I was trying to be more realistic this time. I also hired a doula who was very comforting and nonjudgmental. She had two children with a similar age gap to what my children would have and so I felt that she could relate to some of my experiences and that was really nice. This pregnancy was very similar to the first one. Again, I did chiropractic throughout. I had minimal discomfort throughout the pregnancy until the third trimester for a couple of weeks, I did have some sharp pelvic pain which made walking and moving, and even lying down comfortably very difficult. I also had some digestive pain for a few days, so I was wearing a support band and I went to the chiropractor a little bit more during that time. I went to a pelvic floor specialist. Eventually, it did get better, so I was thankful that it got better because I was 37-38 weeks at that time, but luckily, it improved before I was at the very end of my pregnancy. So at one point, I thought, “Maybe I’ll deliver before my due date this time,” because I was having that discomfort, but then my due date came and went and I started asking my midwife more questions about what an induction might look like because that was really what I most feared and I wanted to have more information this time so that I could prepare. I feel much more comforted when I have more information. I was really worried about the cascade of interventions happening again and going into the process in a similar way as I did with my first birth. This midwife that I was working with said that they would be comfortable with me going to 41+5 or 6 before inducing as long as everything was looking good, so I might have to go in for a non-stress test again or something like that. Because my son was an IUGR pregnancy, my third trimester, I was being monitored more closely this time and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t miss anything because we didn’t have the IUGR diagnosis until 41 weeks and that really, I think, made it difficult to prepare. I had more ultrasounds at the hospital where I was going to deliver and at 32 weeks, we had a scan that looked like we might have another IUGR diagnosis. Her abdominal circumference was between 10-11% and once you get below 10%, that’s considered IUGR. So now, I had to keep going for more scans because of that. The doctor who read my scan at the hospital came in and warned me that with IUGR, they recommended delivering by 39 weeks which, of course, made me nervous because I had gone to 42 weeks without labor the first time. I wondered whether I’d be able to have the experience of labor at all since this would likely be my last child and I was 38 years old. I wasn’t really planning to have more than two children. I really just wanted to have some experience in labor. When I told her of my hopes for a VBAC and my preference not to induce, the doctor said to me, “Look, as someone who has done it three times, it’s not all that.” I remember being like, “Oh my gosh, lady. That’s great for you to say, but you’ve had three vaginal births so you obviously don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like to not experience it.” She had no sense of how that could be a loss. She didn’t know that could also be a loss. The birth experience can be mourned as well. I actually considered not having another scan because I wanted to avoid everything that had happened with my first pregnancy and I still had it in my mind, “The numbers could be wrong.” It was causing me so much stress. Ultimately, I did decide that I wanted more information so that if we did end up with an IUGR diagnosis, I would have more data to decide on the next steps and have time to accept a change of plans this time if I needed to. Luckily, we went back at 36 weeks and her growth had improved and now the abdominal circumference was about 23%. So now, we just were going to wait and she was just considered constitutionally small, so I did not have the IUGR diagnosis with her. I started taking red raspberry leaf. Meagan: That’s so awesome. Eve: Yeah. So I started taking red raspberry leaf tea again. I decided to stop working at 38 weeks this time, so I already had some time on my hands to just be pregnant and relax and do things that I needed to do. So as I was getting to 41 weeks, I started to feel like I was on the clock and I was pressured to make something happen to avoid another induction. That was my own pressure. Nobody was putting pressure on me, but it was in my own mind. So at 41 weeks, I went for acupuncture and I felt a lot of movement. My midwife never pushed cervical checks, but when I was there, I asked, “Is there anything that we can do to get this moving?” My midwife said, “Well, we can do a cervical check and a sweep,” so I decided to do that. I was 2 centimeters and 80% effaced at 41+1. I was shocked and very excited because I hadn’t had anything. Meagan: That’s awesome. Eve: Yeah, something’s happening. So I had this membrane sweep and then that night around 8:00, I started having sharp cramps. They were about 10 seconds long and they were coming every 3-5 minutes. My doula advised me to rest and hydrate, so I tried to do that. I was lying on the floor with the lights dim and my birth ball, but I asked my husband to stay up with me because I was starting to need some support with the contractions. I wasn’t sure if I was in labor, but I asked my mom to come anyway because she lives about an hour and a half away and our plan was for her to stay with our son while we went to the hospital. She got there at 1:30 in the morning and I had these contractions that were not really following a pattern yet. The next morning, our son got up around 6 and my mom and my husband were taking turns watching him and then giving me counterpressure. They were sort of going back and forth. Since I hadn’t been in labor before, I didn’t call the doula to come because I was expecting that I still had a while to go. I was coping fairly well just with them, so I said, “Why don’t we just ride it out a little longer?” And then my contractions started spacing out, so I asked my husband who had gone to the park with my son to come home. This was around close to 10 in the morning. At 9:30 or 10 in the morning, I asked him to come back because my contractions started picking up again once they had left. I think my body was having trouble focusing when my son was there and wanting me and needing me, and then once they left the house, everything picked up and started to get much stronger. So of course, our bags weren’t packed and it took us a while to get out of the house. We get in the car and now my contractions are 3 minutes apart in the car. I was putting my left fist behind my low back and gripping the handle above the window with my right hand and doing horsey layups and moaning really loudly. I don’t know how my husband was even able to drive throughout all of that, but luckily, there was no traffic and it was 25 minutes to get there. We got to the hospital. It was 12:40 PM. We left the car on with the hazard lights in front of the hospital and of course, my husband’s bag dropped with everything in it in front of the hospital. We get in there and immediately, they obviously realized I needed help so they put me in a wheelchair and we rushed to triage. Our midwife met us there and I couldn’t even lie down to be checked because my contractions were so close together. I really felt like I needed to bend over and get counterpressure. My midwife was like, “You’re obviously staying. Let’s get you in a room.” I got in there and they were trying to put the monitor on me. The nurse in there, as they were having trouble getting the monitor on, says to me, “I really need you to get this monitor on because of the great risk you’re taking of uterine rupture.” I was, at this point, so in the zone getting through the contractions that I was like, “I can’t let this get to me.” I was just too busy trying to cope, so I just silently rolled my eyes. My husband and the midwife were both like, “Okay. Lay off.”At this point, I still hadn’t gotten a gown on or anything. I basically just stripped everything off to get on the monitor and I just stayed naked the entire time because I had no modesty at this point. Eventually, we got the monitor going and I started feeling pushy almost immediately after that.I realized we never told the doula to meet us, so my husband texted her to come. She got there as I was pushing. We tried a few different positions and at some point, it started to be clear that it wasn’t effective. I wasn’t really, I guess, pushing effectively. I remember the midwife saying, “I’m going to give you some help so that this baby doesn’t need any NICU time. I’m going to put my fingers inside you and I want you to push to where you feel them.” I did that a couple of times and I was able to feel my daughter’s head which was really awesome. Then I pushed again one more time the same way and she was out. It was just so awesome and shocking that it actually happened. I pulled her to my chest and it was just amazing. Like I said, she did not have IUGR. Meagan: I was going to say, how big was she? I was just curious. Eve: She ended up being actually smaller than my son. She was 6 pounds, 4 ounces and she was almost 20 inches long. She was in the 5th percentile for weight, but overall she was healthy and so I will say that the difference was when she was born, she was considered SGA which is small for gestational age, but her presentation was different. She was more proportionate. It was just interesting how you could have a baby weighing less and be almost the same length, but very different. Meagan: But not have that diagnosis, yeah. My baby was 6,2. Eve: Oh wow. Meagan: Yeah, but she was 18 inches. Eve: Yeah, so it puts it in perspective, right? Meagan: Yeah. Eve: I will have to say, my husband was so amazing the entire time. He stayed calm. He advocated for me. He believed in me. There were times during my pregnancy that I got annoyed because I felt like he didn’t understand how difficult this could be to actually have a vaginal delivery after having a C-section because he sort of was of the mindset, “Well, this is how it’s supposed to happen.” I was like, “Well, that’s what I thought the first time.”So I felt like I wasn’t getting through to him, but I do feel like that mindset that he had really helped to normalize the process in that he could stay positive when I was doubtful. And during the contractions, we basically labored at home the entire time. She was born two hours after we got to the hospital. When they finally checked me after I started pushing, I was like, “Maybe this isn’t working because I’m not really fully dilated,” and the midwife was like, “Well, I never really got to check you.” But I was complete. I was complete so it was time to push. But one thing that I think helped me cope for as long as we did while we were home was my husband kept reminding me, “You really only have to get through the first 30 seconds and then it starts to ease.” So each contraction, we would have the build-up, and then once we were halfway through, it was like, “Okay. Now you’re downhill.” I think having that mentality really helped me to stay with it and be able to cope for so long at home without going to the hospital or even having the doula present. But like I said, since I was never in labor, I was thinking, “Well, we might get to the hospital and I’ll be 7 centimeters and I’ll still have a little ways to go,” or even 5 or 4. Who knows? So it was really a shock that we got in. The last thing that I want to share about this experience is that during this whole time, I wasn’t even thinking about how long it would take me to push her out. I was just trying to push. I had never done this before. The midwife did share with me because I asked about the urgency, “Why did we need to get the baby out so soon once she was coming out when you needed to help me?” The midwife said, “Well, they were getting ready to use a vacuum because the baby’s heart rate was starting to not recover as well after each contraction.” I guess since I was complete and pushing for about an hour, for some reason, I guess they thought the baby maybe had been in the canal far down enough where she should have been out sooner or they thought I would be able to push her out sooner and because it was taking so long, her heart was having trouble recovering. I’m glad that nobody told that to me in the actual experience. It was scary. It was scary and I told my midwife I was scared before I started pushing and they said, “You’re safe.” I remember feeling, “You’re right. I have these people around me. I have you. I have my husband. I have my doula,” and I had people around me to support that process and I’m grateful that this birth experience and that this hospital was very different than the first experience because after my daughter was born, I just remember feeling, “We did this. We did this together.” Me, my baby, and my husband, this was a team effort. The nurses really just let us be. We had all of this time alone in the room with her and it was just so special. Even though we were in a hospital, it really was as good as it could have been. We got to go home the very next day, so it was a night and day experience hospital-wise, birth-wise, recovery-wise, and now after having this birth experience, it’s really helped me to make peace with my first birth experience and I don’t really see that as a failure anymore. I just see it as a different birth story. Meagan: Yeah. I love that. There is no failing at birth. We often times label ourselves as that failure, but it’s because of the way the world creates that word failure. They place it into our minds and they say that word and it’s like, “Oh, well if this doesn’t happen, then you failed.” It’s just not true, so I love that you have come around to say, “Okay. I didn’t fail. That was just a different birth experience.”Eve: Right. Right, and I’m grateful that I’ve had both experiences now because I do have two beautiful, healthy children and they arrived in two very unique ways even though I had similar pregnancies and similar questions throughout both pregnancies, the way they arrived was very different and I feel like I learned so much from them. I hope that my story can help other people who might have experienced something similar. Meagan: I love it so much. Thank you so much for being with us today. Like you said, being on the opposite end of a big baby with a small baby. A small baby can be a quote-on-quote “concern” or problem if you want to say from a provider’s standpoint. They can view things differently, so yeah. It’s fun and unique to have the opposite end of things. Thank you so much again and congratulations to your cute two babies, to both of your babies. Thank you again. Eve: Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It’s really been a true pleasure. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands