Episode 226 Pat's VBAC Over 40 + Processing Your Difficult VBAC

The VBAC Link

Achieving your VBAC is an accomplishment worth celebrating, but it's also important to hold space for processing the difficult moments.

Pat joins us today to share how she birthed both of her babies over the age of 40 as well as how she found a supportive team to go for her VBAC.

She shares the importance of paying attention to your feelings when choosing a provider even if everyone around you feels differently. Pat experienced some traumatic events during her VBAC which left her feeling grateful for the outcome desired but unexpectedly having to grieve the loss of what she thought would be a dreamy and empowering experience.

Additional Links

Pat’s Website

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details

Meagan: Hey guys, this is Meagan. I’m so excited for another amazing story. We are actually going to be talking about something that I don’t feel like we talk about a ton and it’s going to be pregnancy after 40. Even really 36, right? I feel like in the medical world, 36 is old. I’m doing air quotes because it’s such an annoying thing to be but we are going to talk about that. Pregnancy after 40 and what that looks like and how that may feel for someone.

We have our friend, Pat, today from L.A. She’s going to be sharing her stories. She did have a VBAC and we talk about this often on social media and things like that where people may have a vaginal birth after a Cesarean and it’s the most healing, amazing, beautiful experience and then sometimes it’s not. So I’m excited to hear from Pat today and hear more about her experience.

Review of the Week

But of course, we have a Review of the Week so I’m going to make sure to get into that before Pat starts sharing her story. Just a fair reminder, if you guys have a chance, if you would please leave us a review, we love your reviews as you know. We talk about it all the time but really, they make us smile so much and we love reading them on the podcast. So push pause and go leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.

This specific review is from Sarah. She doesn’t have a subject on it but she says, “I am a birth and postpartum doula who is always on the search for a birthy podcast to listen to in my car. I was so excited when I found The VBAC Link so I could listen to these amazing stories from women all around the world who reached their goals through becoming educated thanks to Meagan and Julie. I recently certified with The VBAC Link as well and I’m impressed by the thorough delivery with which their knowledge was shared in the training. I’m super excited to move into the next chapter of my career and I’m so thrilled to do so with an amazing community and support.”

Sarah, I love it. Thank you so much. It is so awesome to have you as one of our VBAC doulas. Birth workers, if you didn’t know out there, we actually have a birth worker course on how to support your VBAC clients because again, we talk about it. It shouldn’t be anything more than just someone going in to have a baby, but with vaginal birth after Cesarean or a Cesarean I should say, and wanting to go for vaginal birth after Cesarean, there are hurdles that a lot of clients have to jump through. It’s so nice to learn how to support them so we have a certification course and we add you to our doula list and share you with the world.

So parents, if you are looking for a VBAC doula, go to thevbaclink.com/findadoula and see if there’s a doula near you.

Pat’s Stories

Meagan: Okay, Pat. I can’t wait. Thank you so much for taking the time today to be with us.

Pat: No, thank you for inviting me. I’m so excited. This podcast has been such a big and helpful thing to prepare for my VBAC so thank you for that.

Meagan: Absolutely, well I’d love to turn the time over to you.

Pat: Yeah, I am Spanish so that’s why I have a weird accent but I’ve been living in L.A. for the last ten years with my husband. I have two kids now. One is two and a half and the other one is going to turn ten months in just a little bit.

My journey started really late or later than other people here in the states. I always knew I wanted to be a mother but then I saw my friends having kids and saw what that really means to your life, so for a little bit, I was trying to decide whether I could really take on motherhood or not. I knew that if I were to be a mother, it would be in my late thirties. I really wanted to push it which makes sense now because if I hadn’t done that then, I would have different kids. I really believe in destiny and these kids were meant to be for me. So I think I’m happy with that.

With that also came a lot of stress from the doctors. All this talk about the extra risks and how difficult or impossible it was going to be to get pregnant at 39. My journey, thank God, wasn’t that hard. I had an IUD, a copper IUD, and I took it out in January 2019. For the first three months, I didn’t get pregnant, but I also had weird pain and my period was really strange. I had an ultrasound and they saw that actually, I had an IUD inside of me even though they took it out.

Meagan: What?!

Pat: Yeah. It was so bizarre. I don’t want to get into details because it will take us the whole hour, but what happened was that someone along the way, and I had an IUD since I was 20 because I had DBT and I couldn’t take hormones so that was the way I chose to go. In those years, someone forgot to take out the old IUD and just pushed a new IUD inside of me.

Meagan: Oh my land.

Pat: It was crazy to discover that. So anyway, they took it out and three months after that, I was pregnant. That was October-November I think of 2019. So it was fairly quick for my age and everything. I was thrilled. My pregnancy also was super healthy. I did have certain things here and there but nothing that a younger person wouldn’t have. I barely had any morning sickness or anything. I did have a couple of weird symptoms. One of them was palpitations. I didn’t know that I had them and then towards the middle of my pregnancy, I started having not fainting, but lightheaded episodes where I really had to lay down in the street when I was walking my dog around several times

We discovered that it was something regarding my breakfast really, so I had a thing for toast with peanut butter in the morning and I guess the way my blood sugar was doing something weird and I was really almost fainting in the street. Once a doctor told me to actually change that for protein and to have protein first in the morning. Immediately, that disappeared.

Other than that, everything was great. I was feeling super beautiful with my pregnant belly and I was going for an unmedicated birth. I was really preparing mentally and physically for it. I did Hypnobabies. I was really in my head. I was obsessed with it as a friend of mine recommended me to be if I wanted to achieve it. I was doing all of the work. Everything was going great.

Of course, we get into 2020. COVID comes in. My husband was able to still come into the 20-week ultrasound which was awesome, but after that I was alone and there was a lot of stress added to the pregnancy. I feel like it was toward the end of my third trimester that I don’t know why, but my mind started to lose its balance. All of the fear about motherhood came crashing down and the last few weeks, they were full of excitement but also fear. Everybody was like, “Are you so excited?” I was like, “Yeah, but I’m also so scared.” I felt guilty. I couldn’t talk to anyone about that. Because I was scared, people would think I am a bad mother or I’m going to be a bad mother.

Anyways, we didn’t hire a doula which is important in this birth story because of COVID but I guess I didn’t know that I was going to need her so much. The doctor told me towards the end of the pregnancy that he was OP but that he could still move. I would feel the baby. He didn’t have space. I could feel that my belly was so tight. I didn’t think that he was going to move. I didn’t know anything about helping him position more than a couple of exercises I saw on Spinning Babies.

When the birth started, it was after my 40-week appointment. I wasn’t very dilated. My doctor checked me and I was 1 centimeter and then she said that I wouldn’t probably go into labor for a few days. But then the next day, I woke up with contractions. They were light and just like period cramps every ten minutes. So I was excited but I also was in denial. “This cannot be. I’m only 1 centimeter,” which didn’t matter at all. I’ve learned that now.

During the whole day, they went like that. They progressed a little bit in how painful they were, but they were ten minutes apart. Nothing was really happening so I just kept going. I had heard of prodromal labor, so I thought that maybe this was not it. By the time I went to bed, they were 7-10 minutes apart, but they were not super painful but painful enough that I couldn’t sleep during the whole night.

Meagan: So tired, I’m sure.

Pat: So tired. This was a Friday. So Saturday, it just kept going the same. Actually, the contractions got a little bit weirder. Instead of coming down and getting a pardon, they were all over like seven minutes to ten, five, and they were getting more and more intense as I would go but still, nothing was happening. Basically that night, I tried everything because I called my doctor and she confirmed that it could be prodromal labor. I had the feeling that it wasn’t, that it was labor that was not progressing because nothing would stop it, not any bath, nothing.

So that night, I took some Benadryl and could sleep between contractions, but it was a few minutes here and there. But the next day, it was Sunday. I was so tired and then up to this point, I had been trying to move forward with this pregnancy and this birth. I would do exercises but at this point, I was scared because I thought, “I am going to get caught up in this level of pain for two more weeks and I just don’t think I can take it.” I tried to slow it down. I wanted to wait basically. I was also losing my mind a little bit. It was my third day with very little sleep. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know how to cope with contractions, or how to breathe properly. This is where a doula, I think, would have made a difference.

Obviously, my baby was not coming down, and just having someone with me that would have helped me position the baby better, I think, would have made a difference but it was what it was at this point. So another night without sleeping and we are on Monday now. The doctor tried to convince me to go in for a membrane sweep, but I really couldn’t get out of the house, so again, I lived in the bath. I was in the bath, in the bath, in the bath. Finally, my water broke a little bit. There was a gush of water but it was yellow. That’s how I could see it. I didn’t know what that meant, but obviously, it meant that there was some meconium.

So my doctor told me that since my water broke, she felt comfortable waiting until the next day, but I had to be in the hospital at 7:00 AM on Tuesday. By that night, I think it was 1:00 in the morning when the pain was so bad and my mind was so out of it. I was even regretting being pregnant at this point. Just get me out of here. So basically, I told my husband, “Let’s just go because I don’t know what this is. I want an unmedicated birth but if this is nothing then I really need help because I just cannot go on like this anymore.”

So we got there. The triage was horrible. It was hours until I was checked in. Discovering that I was only 3 centimeters was crushing, to say the least. Once I was there, I knew that an epidural would help me sleep and that’s what I needed. So by that time, they still did walking epidurals which I don’t know why they call it that because they don’t let you walk anyways.

Meagan: It’s just a lighter epidural essentially.

Pat: I know, but they should change the name. Definitely. So that really helped me. I slept for an hour and when my doctor came and checked me in the morning, I was 5 centimeters. I was at 0 station. Basically, the doctor said because of the circumstances, she thought that I had to be around a 6 by the time she came back later on. I thought it was achievable. I had a whole morning. By that time also, I had developed a lot of pain in my left side and in my right side. The right was a sciatica type of pain and the left was just my lower back. It was hurting a lot like my kidney type of thing.

I was drinking water and drinking water and I just couldn’t get satiated. I kept laboring in bed. They didn’t mention the OP baby. They didn’t offer a peanut ball. Nothing, so I was there just surviving in bed. They wouldn’t let me get up, so I would sneak in between visits from the nurse and get up with my husband a little bit because I would feel my legs and everything. I needed to get up because it was so excruciating, the pain in my back when I was laying down.

The doctor came at 3:00 PM and I was again 5 centimeters. Her fear of infection was clearly high. She was scared for me even if nothing really was happening. At that point, my water really, really, really broke and there was this green, thick layer. It was full of meconium coming out of me which I knew was only a matter of watching it. It didn’t mean that I could not have a vaginal birth, but it was a little concerning.

The doctor convinced me to take Pitocin at that point. I started that at 3:30 and the pain in my sides increased. It was more and more difficult to try to stay in bed. A few hours later, I think it was around 9:00 PM, I had blood pressure issues. Everything was starting to pile up. There was a little bit of protein in my urine, but I had been given so many different infusions of liquids that my doctor chose to change one first before giving me my other medicine to see if that worked. That worked, but by that time, for someone who didn’t want any interventions, I was full of tubes everywhere to my uterus with a catheter, it was just really bizarre.

During that time, I also had a resident come in. She was the chief of residents and she was one of the sources of my trauma really in the hospital because she was really disrespectful to me not only in her comments. When she saw me in pain, she said, “Oh, you wanted a natural birth so I don’t know what you expected,” and things like that. Also, she came and checked me and she really hurt me. I asked her to stop and instead of stopping, she pushed harder inside of me.

Meagan: Oh!

Pat: I didn’t even know how to react to that because she ignored me and she kept doing it even harder. I felt so violated by that and that just stayed with me.

Meagan: I’m so sorry.

Pat: Yeah, it was crazy. I continued laboring and the blood pressure resolved. The kidney was failing. They said it was damaged. That was why the protein was coming out on the tests. But with that change of liquids that they gave me, apparently, it just made it better. The pain was still there, but the protein disappeared. My blood pressure came down and that was really it. Around 10:30, following my notes, apparently, the baby’s heart dropped. It lasted more than eight minutes, but it wasn’t a big drop. That was also my first experience with everyone coming into the room screaming. This is another thing. I saw this chief resident talking to my husband about what was happening to me but no one was talking to me. They were yelling at me, “On all fours!”

That was after I got up and they saw me up, so they were also yelling at me, “What did you do? This is all you. Go back to bed.” I was so scared. Yeah, but nobody was explaining to me what was happening. Luckily, they got that under control and then they explained to me what had happened. They told me to lay on my side really, really still. On that side, it really, really hurt almost like torture. A really well-designed torture. They had stopped Pitocin and they restarted it an hour later. Everything was going well, but again, after a couple of hours, there was another deceleration. We are now at 4:00 AM so it is 24 hours after I had gotten to the hospital.

This one was shorter, but it was deeper. I was only 6 centimeters when I had it. I couldn’t even picture myself having a baby frozen in this position. “You cannot do this. You cannot do that.” How am I going to birth a baby then? I was really sad, but I didn’t see any other way out. I had my cry with my husband and then we just went to the OR.

It wasn’t an emergency, so we had a minute to process. It was something that needed to be done. My doctor was great at talking to me. This was the first time that she actually came to the hospital after 24 hours, so once she was there, I didn’t have to deal with the chief resident. She is always really respectful and she always talks to me about everything before making a decision so that was great and helped me calm.

The surgery went great, but I was so out of it. For example, when they were going to pull out the baby, they lowered the curtain but I couldn’t see. I couldn’t even say it. I didn’t see it. I couldn’t see and I said, “Okay,” then I turned and looked at my husband and at his face. He was looking at our baby being born which also was beautiful, but I was really, really out of it. I think it took them 15 minutes or so to bring the baby. They also raised him, but I only saw the legs. I remember him crying and just realizing that I actually had a baby. It’s a real baby and not a fish that was inside of my belly. It was pretty great.

Then they wheeled me into recovery and I was in a lot of pain, but my husband recalls actually that when they brought the baby, he actually said, “I thought you were dying but then they brought the baby and put him on your chest and you were fine.” I didn’t remember that but I keep that as a memory because I thought that was one of the most beautiful things that happened. He also crawled to my breast which was really great.

Meagan: Yay. That’s really cool because a lot of times with Cesareans, they don’t allow that to happen so that’s really cool.

Pat: Right. No, they were really good at giving me the baby as soon as they could. I also held him in the OR but I wasn’t feeling great and then they took him back. But then this nurse came and without saying anything. I’m in this beautiful moment. The baby latches. I’m just enjoying it and this woman starts punching me in the uterus basically. That’s how it felt. Massaging me and I screamed like I’ve never screamed in my life. It hurt so much. I asked her. Again, she didn’t say anything. I asked her, “What are you doing?” She said, “I have to do this because it’s either this or you’re going to bleed to death.” I said, “But I’m not hemorrhaging or anything. That was just another thing that really impacted me.

Meagan: That sticks in your mind, yeah.

Pat: Exactly. The flashbacks come afterward. It might not sound like a big deal, but it is a big deal. It’s a really big deal. We went to the room and after that, everything was beautiful getting to know our baby and naming him because we knew that he was a boy but we had different names. He was great. He was drinking. He was wetting the diaper but then because of all of the liquids that I got, first of all, he was 8 pounds, 12 ounces when he was born but almost a pound of that or half a pound of that was liquid. He was so swollen.

Meagan: Yes. I want to talk about that because a lot of people don’t realize that’s a thing. We have long labors and we receive a lot of fluid or we receive a lot of antibiotics and all of these fluids, it can actually make our baby bigger than they actually are. So yeah. It’s crazy. You have to have an 8-pound baby come out, but then they’re 7 pounds. It’s scary because it looks like they’ve dropped so much weight and then you’re not thinking that you are feeding your baby right and they’re not getting enough milk when actually, they’re getting rid of that excess fluid.

Pat: That was part of the problem. It’s crazy that they don’t know it.

Meagan: They don’t talk about that.

Pat: The problem was that he was losing so much weight because he was getting out of the liquids but in the process because apparently, all of the liquids threw his pH off so he was dehydrated. He was eating normally but he was dehydrated. After another day, his diaper was dry. I told the nurse, “I don’t think this is normal.” She was like, “No, no. This is normal. Don’t worry.” I was like, “Okay. I guess maybe babies are like that.” But then we had a great lactation consultant and she noticed that he was breathing really fast.

They had to take him to the NICU just because of dehydration. It was another setback on the happy ending type of thing. But luckily, he only spent the night and a morning there and he was okay. We took him home. This was already day number four in the hospital. From then on, he thrived. We had to do for a little bit, I think it’s called a [inaudible] feeding thing just to make sure he was gaining weight but it was really obvious from the get-go that my milk was enough for him and he was good with it so after a week, we weaned him out of the bottle and he was only breastfeeding, gaining weight, and everything was great.

Yeah, I had a lot of emotions but my postpartum was really good. I think that has a lot to do with my placenta encapsulation but I will never know I guess.

Meagan: I know. I love placenta encapsulation myself. So yeah.

Pat: So yeah, second baby. I remember a nurse in my room. I was actually getting wheeled to the OR and I had a nurse talking to me, “Don’t worry, honey. You can have a VBAC.” I was like, “I don’t know about this VBAC, but I’m telling you that I’m not having more kids.”

So that VBAC thing stuck with me. I started having baby fever really early on like six months postpartum. I thought my baby was so cute, I thought, “I want another baby.” My husband was a little resistant but I knew that I was going to convince him so in the meantime, I started listening to The VBAC Link Podcast. It was a great source of learning. I’ve always loved birth stories, but this was really specific. Listening to so many Cesarean stories, I could also understand better what happened to me and maybe make a plan for why I didn’t want it to repeat again in the future.

When I got pregnant, I got pregnant on the first try. I just want to say it again because I was 42 at the time. I was 41.5. I turned 42 when I was pregnant. Age doesn’t have to be an impediment to having kids. Every person is a person. Statistics don’t represent you. I want people to have hope for that. This pregnancy went also really well. The symptoms were a little bit worse. I didn’t have extreme nausea or anything, but it was a little bit worse. Not too bad, but a little bit worse. I hear that happens with second babies and third.

At this moment, what I was more focused on was my VBAC. Of course, I wanted to go unmedicated too, but I really wanted to do everything possible to have a vaginal birth. I hired this doula. I live in L.A. and there is this famous doctor who everyone goes to. I thought, “I love my doctor, but she already was talking about how she follows a certain procedure at the hospital.” At 39 weeks, she recommended being induced and all of that stuff. I just thought, “She’s great, but I really want to have the best chance. If they call this guy the king of VBACs, shouldn’t I go with him?” I went with him and he was really hopeful about my VBAC. He has a weird personality. He’s really nice but at the same time, he is just not everyone’s cup of tea and not my cup of tea in a lot of different things.

I had a little bit of a red flag for certain things that he was trying to force on me. When I would tell him, “I don’t want this or I don’t want that,” he would just get mad basically and try to push it. I was going away from having to convince my doctors of what I wanted for my birth so I landed on a guy who was supposed to be– it felt to me at the time– the only way of having a VBAC and having to have the same fights with him, it felt really confusing. I think it’s really important to know that because a provider might be VBAC-supportive, it doesn’t mean that they are not also intervention-supportive which is what happened with this guy basically.

I continued with him because I was really scared to not have my VBAC unless I was with him.

Meagan: Right, because everybody around is like, “Go here.”

Pat: Yeah, and here’s another thing. I could find maybe one or two medium reviews, but all of the reviews about him in all of the VBAC groups were like, “No, this is a great guy.”

Meagan: This is the person, yeah.

Pat: People don’t want to tell bad stories. They don’t want to talk badly about the doctor then what are you doing then? You are just protecting this doctor. You are not protecting women or people that are birthing.

Meagan: Well, and what’s hard too is even though one provider may be very VBAC-supportive and be very cohesive with that patient, it doesn’t mean that he or she is going to be an amazing VBAC-supportive doctor, but may not still fit the same desires. They can be VBAC-supportive but they might not be the right provider for everybody else.

Pat: Yes, yes. I wish I could have read a little bit more about him because then just talking to other women in the group privately, they would say, “Yeah,” and most of the people had a good experience with him, but I wish I would have been able to read or find these reviews because that maybe would have made a difference in trying to find another VBAC-supportive provider. But I stuck with him.

Everything went well. I had no problems that could have been related to age or problems at all. It was a normal, healthy pregnancy. I had been really careful of my positioning during the pregnancy so baby wouldn’t be OP but he was OP too. By that time, we didn’t know he was a he. I knew that it doesn’t matter he’s OP. It’s another baby. It’s another birth. I have a doula now. If I get stuck in another 4-day or 5-day birth, this person is going to help me get through it. I believe I can do it. I just need help. That’s it.

Meagan: Well, and it would probably shorten it because they would probably know and have some tools that would hopefully help.

Pat: Which she did because my story, with this second baby went really similarly. I actually was 39 weeks pregnant this time. I don’t know if it was all of the cleaning I did or my two-year-old, my one-year-old then had this huge tantrum, one that he never had. He cried in my arms for two hours and I felt my first contraction when I was with him. From there, it started the same way. Really low-key, a cramping feeling that went a little bit up during the day but nothing was happening either.

But then at night, I tried to sleep and I was in so much pain. I was having really huge contractions. We are still cosleeping basically. My toddler was there. My husband was there and my body didn’t feel free enough to move things forward. My husband had me labor during the night, but in the morning, it went down. The contractions, I didn’t even time but in the morning they were back to 7-10 minutes and less painful but still really intense. I remember I kept cleaning. I did a set of exercises to get things going from Spinning Babies.

Meagan: Three Sisters?

Pat: The [inaudible] one.

Meagan: Oh, yes. I know what you’re talking about.

Pat: There were a bunch of exercises you could do so I did all of them. Here’s another thing that I recommend to people who have had trauma in their first births. I thought, “I’ve got it.” I thought, “I have processed this. I am okay.” I even wrote a script about witches. It’s named The Resident. I thought I had processed it but I didn’t so when things were really starting to get similar to my first birth, my mind got out of whack. I lost it and I remember crying to my sister-in-law, “This is the same as with Liam. It’s going to be five days. I’m going to end with a Cesarean.” Totally negativity that I didn’t need at that moment.

Meagan: You spiraled. Yeah. I did that too.

Pat: I spiraled, yeah. So you really need to process your first birth before going into a VBAC. But I could feel that things were different. I felt the body recharge that I never had. I could feel my hips hurting a lot which meant something was happening down there so that kept me hopeful. My husband told me, “Listen. I saw you with our first. This is different. You are so much more advanced right now. You never got to this point.”

Meagan: But in your mind, you’re relating to what you know.

Pat: I know and also your mind is not a rational mind in that moment. It is full of fear and you’ve been told that you cannot do this, so why would you think you can do it? That’s where your mind goes in that moment. My doula came finally that afternoon and she had me breathe through the contractions which I think was key because from there on, I could relax with them and I got in the bath and everything felt more controlled.

One of the things that she actually had me do for the last couple of months before the birth was sleeping with two or three pillows in between my legs as if it was a peanut ball or a peanut ball. I had a bunch of pillows. I feel like that was key too because my hips are not too wide for how tall I am. I feel that keeping my hips open really helped this time.

That night, the second night, I went to bed with a Benadryl again and I woke up at 1:00 or so. I was in a lot of pain. Really big contractions that you couldn’t sleep through. Again, I went to the bath and the counterpressure really helped. It really, really helped. It was one of the things that helped me the most. I had the HypnoBabies in my first pregnancy, but it never got to really help me at all. It’s really funny just singing a song in my mind. It was Yellow by Coldplay. Not even loud in my mind. Every contraction and that was it. I could go through them. It was just crazy.

Meagan: I did the same thing with Believe by Whitney Houston.

Pat: It was a random song also.

Meagan: “If you believe,” and singing it in my head, and then I ended up making a slideshow video with that song. It just connected to me.

Pat: That’s so cute. Yeah. It was magic. I think it was 3:00 or 4:00 AM in the morning. It was intense enough that I thought, “If I keep going then I might have him in the car.” I would feel different things in my hips. I could feel a little bit of the movement going down. It was like, “No, no. This is different.” I’m now going to get there and I’m going to be just 3 centimeters. If not, I don’t understand birth at all.

So we went to the hospital. It was 40 minutes away, 30 with traffic. It was bad but not horrible because of Coldplay. When I got there, it was amazing because I had a really strong contraction and the nurses just put me in a room.

Meagan: You didn’t have to be in triage for 3 hours.

Pat: If you go to the hospital, just have a really, really, really big contraction so you don’t have to wait there for 3 hours. So yeah, I got checked. I of course didn’t want a resident around me so I had a midwife team. The midwife checked me and I was 10 centimeters she said but I had a bulging bag so I was 8 centimeters.

Meagan: Yeah. Sometimes a bag can overstretch the cervix and then the bag breaks and the cervix relaxes. It seems like they check and they’re like, “We don’t feel any cervix,” but then the bag goes away and they’re like, “Oh. There’s some cervix left.” So that’s probably what happened.

Pat: I was not even defeated because I thought, “I am still 8 centimeters. I never made it through 6.”

Meagan: Huge. Huge. Yeah.

Pat: I was so proud of myself, but I must say that when I got there, I was walking into the room and my doctor came in. He looked so tired. He had two births before me. What he said was, “Don’t tell me you are in labor.” I’m like, “I am in labor.” You could tell he was not there. He was tired which I understand, but I still feel like you have to be professional. You cannot tell that to a birthing woman. That’s where the problems with him started. It didn’t feel good but I forgot about it. I had my midwife and I was mostly laboring with her. He would just come in and out.

I thought I was doing it. I didn’t want an epidural. I was laboring in the room. I was really tired, but the baby also was really high like -3. He was not down but it didn’t worry me too much. I kept going. I kept going for two or three hours. In between, my doctor came and checked me but there was no progress. At some point, I guess I wasn’t coping as well. I think I was just getting into transition because in between contractions, I was like, “Ohh,” like kind of fainting. I felt like my body needed rest. Two days laboring with this kid felt much more than five days laboring with my other kid, so I don’t know.

My doula suddenly said, “You know, I know you want an unmedicated birth, but I just don’t think you are going to progress if you don’t take the epidural.” I understand she said that because she was scared for me not to have my VBAC but also, I feel like it was early in the game. Why don’t we try other things before that?

But it was true because basically what I thought– my husband though was my huge supporter. He was like, “No, no, no. You’re doing great. You can do this. You can do this.” He still tells me nowadays, “If you could have heard me and not the doula–”. I was like, “Supposedly, doulas have so much experience–”.

Meagan: Sometimes, an epidural is a great tool. There’s this spot where we get in labor where we’re tense and we’re not really letting our body go, so an epidural can come into great play and allow us to finish out that cervix and that dilation and that process, but yeah. If you didn’t want one then there are other things you could do. Different positioning and coping and breathing and water.

Pat: I think that’s what she saw. She saw that I was too tense and that was not going to go anywhere. So I said, “Okay. I’m going to wait half an hour and if I did not progress, then I will consider it. It would be the right thing. It makes sense.” This was almost four hours from the moment we got there. When we got checked, I hadn’t progressed and I accepted the epidural.

Meagan: Did your water break? Was it bulging and then they broke it or was it still bulging?

Pat: The doctor broke it a little bit but just enough so that it would just come out a little bit and come down, but he didn’t break my waters completely. They actually broke when I was laboring in the room. It was really funny because it was gallons of clear water which was a different experience. It was like, “This is so clear. This is so clear.” But it was gallons and gallons of water coming out of my body. It was crazy.

But yeah. After the epidural, I rested. At that point, they didn’t have the option of the walking epidural anymore so it was a normal epidural but I could still feel my legs and a little bit of pressure. It was good but I could rest. I couldn’t sleep but I could rest. Two or three hours after that, I was already at a 9.5 and I had a cervical lip. Oh, in between that also– this is an important piece of information. These are things I want to forget so I forget to tell them.

The doctor came in. He was coming in and out. This was probably at 12:30 or 1:00. He said, “Well, I have a dinner at 5:30 so we need to start pushing at 2:00.” I’m like, “Okay.” And he left. I didn’t know if it was a joke or if it was true but it turns out that he really had a family dinner at 5:30. It turns out that also I was ready and I was almost ready to push, but I was fully dilated by 1:30. That lip really went away. The midwife put me on my side and it was great. She was amazing. I wish everything would have happened just with her.

I started pushing. The pushing phase was really weird to me because I was expecting it to feel good and they were like, “Okay, you’re ready to push. Do you want to push?” I was like, “I guess.”

Meagan: Disconnected.

Pat: Disconnected. Totally disconnected like, “What am I doing here? I don’t understand what’s happening.” I pushed for an hour or so. I asked for the mirror to see what was happening. That was cool but also got me a little bit discouraged because I could see the little advancement with the push. When I was more advanced or ready, they called the doctor. The baby was doing fine. He had a couple of moments where his heartbeat was taking a little longer to come back, so I could see my midwife calling the doctor, but he wasn’t concerned so we kept going.

I think it was one hour into pushing that he came and turned on the lights, propped me up, changed the way I was pushing, and just sat in front of me with a boring face and said, “Okay, let’s see.” It was just not the kind of person you wanted there.

Meagan: Impersonal, yeah.

Pat: Yeah, really impersonal. He was also yelling at people like the nurses. He was in a really bad mood. Yeah. Everything was getting weird. I already had this weird feeling of, “What is happening?” I don’t know. I cannot really describe that but it was this fight or flight mode that you get when you’re birthing that makes your baby come. That’s what started happening to me. The thing is that I kept pushing and pushing and pushing and little by little, there was some progress.

At some point though, he started to mention how he wanted me to get a little bit more of the epidural, but I talked to my doula and to my husband. I really wanted to feel what was happening, but then he kept going on about how if I had the epidural it was going to be better because he was going to have to stitch me and then, “Oh, that hurts a lot,” and then this and this and this. He kept going into my head. I really regret this, but I let him convince me and I got a little bit more of the epidural.

At that point, all of the pressure disappeared. I could feel but yet I couldn’t feel as much. After that, when the epidural was already in, he said, “You know what? The head of the baby is coming in and out, in and out, in and out. What if I take a vacuum and I use in only just to hold the head of the baby in the same space in between contractions?” I had heard this on a birth story. It worked for the mother. This was two and a half hours into pushing so I said, “Yes, yes. Let’s do it,” because I could see in the mirror that that was true and that was happening.

He put the vacuum on and they closed– I don’t know. I closed my eyes and when I opened them because everyone was telling me, “Open them. Open your eyes. The baby is coming.” He’s basically yanking the baby out of me. This is all how I felt that it happened. I’m sure the other side is different. This is where my problem comes with this VBAC and it’s just that I felt I was tricked into using an intervention that I didn’t want. The baby was born at 4:45 basically.

Meagan: Right before dinner.

Pat: The other thing is that he had the baby. The baby was crying. It was a boy which was super exciting to discover. He was pink and one of the other things I had told him was that I wanted that baby on my stomach. One of the things I missed in my other birth was the feeling of this high when they put the baby on your chest and he knew. I had told him so many times. He had the baby and he kept cleaning him up, cleaning him up, cleaning him up. I have a file of pictures where I’m holding out my hands to grab him and I retract them until I just snatched the baby out of him basically.

Meagan: Give me my baby. Give me my baby.

Pat: Give me my baby. Give me my baby. I breathed out this moment of rage and I could be present with my baby. I welcomed him and everything was great. From that moment on, nobody took him away from me. I held him and he felt so familiar. I felt like our family was complete. At least that feeling wasn’t taken away from me, just the joy of welcoming my baby.

Everything in the postpartum was great, but I really struggled. I struggled a little bit. I don’t think it was depression but the baby blues were really hard on me for 2-3 weeks. I couldn’t stop crying all the time. I would remember my VBAC and I felt really guilty. I even remember the midwife, “You got your VBAC. You got your VBAC.” It was like, “Yeah, I got my VBAC.” I’m glad. I didn’t want a C-section, but this is not what I wanted. I feel so robbed. I feel robbed and it’s so bad of a feeling to have.

Meagan: Yeah. You did. You got your VBAC. Everybody on the outside is like, “Yay. This is what you wanted,” but it was very traumatic getting there. It was really positive and then it took a spin and things happened to you that reflected not as positively. We’ve talked about this back when Julie and I were together too. You can be grateful for your vaginal birth after a Cesarean. You can be grateful for your CBAC, your Cesarean birth after Cesarean. You can be grateful for your birth, but that doesn’t mean you can’t grieve another experience or be upset. You don’t have to have one without the other. They can go together. Unfortunately, you have this space now where you’re like, “Yeah, I did, but I reflect differently than everyone might think.”

Pat: Yeah. I feel like all the work that I did, he just took it away from me because he was in a rush and it wasn’t necessary.

Meagan: Yeah, I’m so sorry.

Pat: I’m processing it. You can focus on the positive things, but it’s not great.

Meagan: Well, congratulations on your baby boy.

Pat: Thank you.

Meagan: But yeah, I think that’s something to note and it’s so hard. We as doulas here had a client who said the same thing, “I knew I didn’t want this. We went over this with you. We all went over it, but for some reason, I just went with what the doctor said.” It’s so hard not to. We are in this very vulnerable space and they have this way sometimes– I’m not going to say all the time– but projecting this, “You have to make decisions right now” or “You have to do this or this scary thing will happen.”

I don’t think that they really realize how their speaking to us impacts us as birthing women, but it does. It does. The things they say and even like you said, he sat down and gave you a blank stare. “All right, let’s see what we can do here.” Just that right there takes away from someone’s space. Providers, doulas, if you are listening, anybody who is entering a birth space, please make sure that whatever is going on in your personal life, whatever is taking over at that moment, leave it at the door. I know it’s hard. I know it’s hard. As a doula, if there’s ever a situation where I have that, I might need to call my partner because if I can’t shut that off and join this beautiful space and hold space for my clients, then maybe I shouldn’t be there.

It’s hard because these providers are just going to be there but we have to be mindful. We have to be more mindful of how we present ourselves, what comes out of our mouths, and again, the actions that are done to us because they impact us so much. So I’m sorry that that did happen and I’m sorry that along the way, you had to go back and forth in everything. I am happy for you but at the same time, I grieve with you. I feel you.

I am so sorry. So sorry, but congratulations at the same time.

Pat: Thank you so much. I feel like you really understand. When I’m telling this story, not everybody understands why it hurt me so much. I feel that you and your community probably will understand.

Meagan: Absolutely. We understand. We hear you. We feel you. We’ve been there. I really appreciate you and I know you are 10 months postpartum, but we’re still here. We’re still here to help you heal through this journey.

Pat: Thank you so much.

Closing

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