Episode 228 Lindsey's HBAC + Paternal Postpartum Depression

The VBAC Link

“It’s a dream. I am so thankful and just hope I can return the favor to the community because you all have been such a gift in my life. If I can give anything back, I hope that my story helps people.”

Lindsey’s episode has SO much to offer! From listening to over 200 VBAC Link birth stories and extensive evidence-based research, and now fresh off of her own HBAC, Lindsey shares her list of helpful VBAC tips.

As an active duty Air Force servicemember, Lindsey also shares tips on finding birth support during a military PCS as well as getting a referral to birth outside of the hospital under military insurance.

Finally, Lindsey shares her husband’s journey with paternal postpartum anxiety and an update on how his anxiety levels are now– three months after her HBAC.

Lindsey’s stories are just as impressive as she is and we are so honored to have her on the podcast today!

Additional Links

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

The VBAC Link Facebook Community

Full Transcript under Episode Details

Meagan: Hello, you guys. Welcome to The VBAC Link Podcast. We have a story coming to you today from Maryland. We have a mama. Her name is Lindsey and she married her high school sweetheart which I think is so fun. So fun. They have two boys, right?

Lindsey: Yes.

Meagan: Pretty fresh postpartum. Three months out.

Lindsey: Pretty fresh.

Meagan: Pretty cool. Your husband is a stay-at-home dad and you are on active duty Air Force and work as a dentist. How? You are a powerhouse. That is awesome.

Lindsey: Thank you.

Meagan: You are doing a residency and you have lived all over the country and seen so many things and you’ve had a VBAC.

Lindsey: I can’t wait to share.

Meagan: Yes, I can’t wait to get into this story. You guys, one of the things we are also going to be talking about today is something that I actually don’t know if we’ve ever talked about on the podcast but it is something that I feel like I saw in my husband when I was going to VBAC for the first time with my second birth.

I saw what happened and he shut out, so we want to talk about paternal postpartum anxiety a little bit today because it’s something that we don’t focus on highly. We are focused on the mom giving birth and the experience that they have had, but it’s so important not to forget about our significant others or our birth partners, or anybody there that was in the space and witnessed birth. I’m excited to be talking in just a minute with Lindsey about paternal postpartum.

So if you have a significant other that may have had a traumatic experience, definitely listen up. It’s going to be great and then also sometimes, I think just hearing these stories and hearing maybe some of the characteristics and things that are happening, it might help you know. I didn’t know until he had said things when I was preparing for my vaginal birth after two Cesareans, he was saying things and I was like, “Okay. You are not okay completely. That triggered you and let’s talk about it.” So I’m really, really excited.

Review of the Week

Of course, though, we have a review of the week and this is a long one. I would always make Julie read the long reviews because I swear I can’t read and hear myself at the same time. I just get mixed up so we’ll see how this goes.

Lindsey: You’ve got this.

Meagan: This is from likap8 so thank you. It says, “I did it. I have my VBAC.” It says, “Hello, ladies. I was waiting to write this review since I was pregnant and tell you thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. I knew I was going to achieve a VBAC thanks to the knowledge you provide. When I was 12 weeks pregnant, my doula team recommended it to me and I immediately felt really empowered by listening to every single story. I finally had something real from real women telling me that VBACs are possible, that I just needed to educate myself and do everything in my hands to make it happen, and that’s what I did.”

“I hired a doula team. I went to the chiropractor. I did Spinning Babies. I followed doulas on Instagram that tell you what exercise you must do to prepare for labor. I did Hypnobirthing. I submerged myself in everything about natural birth and I trained my body and my mind for this big day. I had my VBAC on March 15, 2022” which is almost a year ago. Actually when this comes out, it will be over a year ago. It says, “and it was the most healing experience. I did it thanks to you all and people like you to help women like me have our dream birth.”

Wow. That was incredible. Such an amazing review. Thank you so much. We are always smiling when we see these reviews come in on Apple Podcasts or Google. Sometimes like I’ve said in the past, we’ll just get an email that says, “Hey, I just want to quickly write a review.” So if you have a review for us, please shoot it over. We would love to read it on the next podcast.

Lindsey’s Stories

Meagan: Okay, Lindsey. Are you ready?

Lindsey: I’m ready. I’m excited.

Meagan: I’m so ready. Thank you so much. I’d absolutely love to turn the time over to you and share all your wealth of knowledge and your experience that these listeners are definitely going to benefit from.

Lindsey: Thank you so much for having me. This is a moment that I daydreamed so many times when I was walking with my son, well, when I was pregnant with him and when I drove. At one point, I was driving to a provider in Virginia and I would listen to it on the drive. I was like, “Maybe one day I can be on the show.”

Meagan: And here you are. Three months postpartum.

Lindsey: Oh my gosh. It’s a dream. I am so thankful and just hope I can return the favor to the community because like your review said, you all have been such a gift in my life. So if I can give anything back, I hope that my story helps people.

Meagan: Awesome.

Lindsey: Yeah. So I first learned about The VBAC Link actually right after I had my Cesarean. It was a week after my Cesarean. I searched #vbac on Instagram and you guys popped up. I started following it and tucked it in the back of my mind because I had heard about a VBAC and I knew that I wanted to try for that. I didn’t start listening to the podcasts until I was 24 weeks pregnant. My family and I had just done another military move. We moved from Kansas to Maryland and I was pretty overwhelmed by starting over again.

The moves have been pretty good, but when you start adding kids to the mix, it makes it a little harder. I felt like I didn’t have a community and I was starting this intense training program and feeling kind of lonely. I felt like I didn’t have the time or mental capacity to learn everything I should learn to have a good VBAC, so the podcast was such a gift because it packaged it into a reasonable amount of time that I could do when I was multitasking and then provide evidence-based information and hear a powerful story. It was just everything that I needed, so I learned so much from you all. I’m so thankful.

My Cesarean story, to start out, I wanted an unmedicated birth with my first son. We hired a doula. We found the only midwife in the town where we were living in Kansas who covered our military insurance. The base I was at didn’t have OB care so we got an automatic referral. I kept a really active pregnancy. I even did cardio kickboxing up until the day before my water broke.

Meagan: Cool. That’s awesome.

Lindsey: I was like, “Yeah, I’ve got this.”

But a couple of things looking back on my pregnancy, I did have a brand new midwife. She said I would probably be the first birth that she attended which is fine.

Meagan: Yeah, you’ve got to start somewhere. You’ve got to start somewhere.

Lindsey: Yeah, but the way that it worked in the city where I was living in Kansas, she was not on her own. She was actually part of an OB practice. She couldn’t be on her own so that practice, I found out later, had the highest Cesarean rate in town. I didn’t know that at the time. She also gave me the recommendation to start using primrose oil vaginally at 38 weeks and I didn’t know that that was an induction method. I found that out on your podcast. She said that it would prevent tearing so I was like, “Oh.” I found out things later. Things I didn’t ask about. I didn’t know to ask about them.

My water started leaking at 40 weeks and 1 day. I woke up at 3:00 AM. It was just a trickle and mild contractions. I went back to bed and called the midwife on call at 6:00 AM. She was like, “Well, you have an appointment today at 8:00 so you can wait for that.” At 8:00, she checked and my waters had ruptured. She left the room to talk to the OB and then when she came back, she was like, “You know, let’s have you eat some breakfast and then have you come start Pitocin.”

The hospital had a birthing center across the street from the hospital so you weren’t actually at the hospital but they were prepared if something went south. You could have a Cesarean there too, but not really meant for it. So then I arrived to the birthing center, or a birthing suite, and they didn’t have a cordless monitor so they put me on a monitor that had the cord. I remember being really disappointed because I was like, “I want to walk around,” but it was really limited with that.

They started Pitocin and really an hour later, I was having a hard time handling them. The contractions were really hard and really fast. We called my doula and she came. I remember my midwife saying, “Don’t scream.” I said, “Okay, well I don’t know what to do. I’m trying not to scream.” I labored with Pitocin for seven hours and got to 6. My midwife then had me stop Pitocin and labor on my own for three hours. I remember sitting in the bath and not wanting to get out. I was like, “I don’t want to get out of this bath.” I wasn’t really feeling any contractions at this time. I did have the labor shakes and I remember asking why. No one really answered me why I was having the shakes.

I found out on your show later, one episode, and I was like, “Oh, that’s normal. I didn’t know that it was normal.”

Meagan: So was the water helping you contraction-wise? You weren’t really feeling them or did it just stop?

Lindsey: Unfortunately, she checked me and I was still at a 6 three hours later.

Meagan: So when they turned Pitocin off, your body wasn’t quite in that active phase on its own.

Lindsey: Okay.

Meagan: Okay. That’s when I was like, “Hmm.”

Lindsey: I know. She put me back on Pitocin and I said, “If you’re going to do that, you’re going to have to give me an epidural,” because my body had just calmed down from not having it for three hours. The epidural worked so well. I was numb all the way up my chest.

Meagan: Oh wow.

Lindsey: I know. I remember asking, “Can we turn this down?” They never turned it down because it never felt less than that. Then seven or eight hours later was when I made it to a 10 and I had got some rest. They said, “Okay, time to push.” Again, I couldn’t feel anything. They showed me how to do it. They said, “You’re doing it.” After two hours of pushing, my midwife went in and manually tried to turn my son because she said that he was in a weird position. When she did, his heart rate deceled.

She told my husband, “Go pull the cord.” He pulled the cord. Eight people flooded in the room and then I heard, “Turn her on my side,” then I was like, “Oh.” So I turned myself on my side and my midwife apologized actually to me afterward. She was like, “I didn’t mean for you to turn you on your side,” but I was just like, I don’t know if it’s because I’m in the military and I heard something so I was like, “I’ve got to do it.” But we laughed about it. It was something to laugh about.

After another hour of pushing, so three hours total, she asked the hospitalist who was working to come in and the hospitalist did a pelvic evaluation. She determined she couldn’t get forceps around my son. He was asynclitic and at that point, she said that she recommended a Cesarean. I learned that it’s an unplanned Cesarean, not an emergency Cesarean, but still, it felt emergent and it felt unplanned. It felt very unplanned.

Meagan: Yeah. That’s one of the hardest things for me as a doula, as a mom who has had them, to decipher what is emergent because they treat it as it is an emergency and we are feeling that feeling so we think that we had these emergent situations.

Lindsey: Yes. You definitely feel it.

Meagan: I’m not saying there aren’t. There are definite emergent situations, but sometimes, we label them as emergencies and they’re not but the way that everybody is making it seem feels that way.

Lindsey: Yes, and the tension was definitely in the room. I mean, even when I was in labor and pushing.

Meagan: Was he doing okay? I know he had the decels a little bit, but was he doing okay now?

Lindsey: Yeah. Oh yeah. He was stable at that point when they brought me back which was good. So he had had the decels.

Then I consented and thirty minutes later, they pulled my son out. He was crying and I cried and felt that instant love that you feel for your baby like you’d do anything for them and it was very special, but I definitely felt really excited and then also really robbed of the birth that I wanted at the same time so it was kind of weird to feel both things at once.

Meagan: But that’s okay. That’s okay.

Lindsey: It is okay. What was encouraging though was like, “Man, I labored for nothing.” 20-something hours of labor, but all of those hormones, the midwife did say, “You know all of the hormones you had released are really good for the baby too,” so I was like, “Okay if it worked for something.”

So then about 4-5 hours after my son was born, they left us alone for a little bit. They still came and checked on us. I woke up and my husband was pacing the room. I asked him, “What’s going on?” He said that he was shaking. I could see that he was shaking and his heart rate was racing. He was really emotional. I told him, “I think you’re having a panic attack.” We were married for almost ten years before we had kids, then we were together for five years before that so we’d been together for a long time and I’d never seen him go through anything like that before.

I was like, “Oh my gosh, just come,” and I had him lay in the hospital bed with me until he stopped shaking. Yeah, so that was our experience at the hospital, and then we got home and I remember we ordered pizza and he couldn’t eat it at home after the hospital. He couldn’t eat anything for a few days after we were home. He barely was eating anything. He couldn’t be in the same room with our son when he was crying. He felt like another panic attack would come on, then couldn’t be in the room when we were sleeping at night.

I remember feeling so concerned that he would never be the same again. We would never want any more children. He is my best friend, so it was like, “Oh my gosh. Who do I talk to about this? What do we do?” We actually ended up, he talked to one of the pastors at our church and worked through that. We were like, “Okay. This is a hard moment. We’re working through it.” Evenings were the worst at the time. When the sun started to go down, that’s when we would try to connect together and talk about what he was feeling and going through. We would pray and we would watch Gilmore Girls which is our favorite show.

It seemed like things were slowly getting better, but then five months later, my husband was watching our son and I had already gone back to work after 12 weeks and then he was also watching our friend’s baby who is a little bit younger than our son and the baby started crying and he had a panic attack.

He called me and I was working across the street. Our base was across the street from where our friends lived. Thankfully that day, a skunk had gotten into the ventilation system at work.

Meagan: Oh gross.

Lindsey: We were all being evacuated at that moment. They called it a natural disaster.

Meagan: Oh my gosh, that’s a natural disaster. That is.

Lindsey: It was $80,000 worth of work to fix it in the end. It was nuts. I was literally leaving my desk at that moment to go home. I said, “I’ll be right there.” So I was there and had him go walk it off. I had heard of a therapy group in town from a friend and got the information. He started therapy pretty soon after. I think it was in that week. He ended up going for the rest of the time we were in Kansas which was I guess a year and a half that he went.

It made a huge difference, a huge huge difference. I am really thankful for that.

Meagan: Did he feel that the birth itself was what brought everything on? Was that a trigger?

Lindsey: Great question. That’s what we’re thinking is that it was all of the heightened emotions from me being in labor and that not going well, then all of a sudden we were in a Cesarean. The pulling of the cord was something that really stood out in his mind, like, “Oh my gosh. This is a serious thing.” Just that fight or flight reflex was on for that whole time.

Meagan: He was the one that pulled the cord, right? He was the one that was told to go pull the cord.

Lindsey: He was the one that pulled the cord, exactly.

Meagan: Which if you think about it, when someone tells you to go pull the cord when you know that’s an emergent, really scary, someone-could-be-dying cord, you can imagine where his mind went.

Lindsey: Exactly, exactly. He brings up this story when they brought me in for the Cesarean, they had me on the– I don’t really remember because they had given me medicine at that point, but he said that I was on a table naked. No curtains were up. They were rubbing iodine on me or something and he was like, “Oh my gosh. Are they not going to put a curtain up? I’m just going to see my wife being sliced open?” They had my arms tied down.

Meagan: Scary.

Lindsey: Scary, yeah. He’s not a medical person at all. I’m a dentist and he doesn’t do the blood thing. He said, “No, that’s not for me.” I’m going to bounce back and forth between what he went through and then jump back into the story too.

I had a lot of questions about my Cesarean mainly about how did I go from wanting an unmedicated birth to having a Cesarean? I remember asking my midwife at my six-week postpartum because I had done some reading on Evidence Based Birth, the website of how you can wait after PROM so many hours before you start Pitocin. I asked her, “Why did we start so quickly?” It was six hours after I had PROM that we started Pitocin.

She said in a hushed voice– no one was in the room with us, but she kept her voice really low. She said, “Oh, it was the OBs that I’m working under.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” I don’t know. I was disappointed that I had a Cesarean, but in the state of weakness, it really taught me to rely on faith and it also set me on a path to really deep-dive into the world of birth education. I’m no expert by any means, but I learned so much compared to where I was at the first time.

Flashing forward to January 2022, we were celebrating my son’s first birthday and I found out I was pregnant. I was nervous and excited. We were going to be getting orders from Kansas to Maryland, so we will flash forward to Maryland. We moved when I was 24 weeks pregnant. My doula, Lauren, came as a recommendation from a friend in the area who lives in Virginia. Lauren, the doula, suggested a practice that was VBAC-friendly.

At this point, I am working at a military installation, so they expected me to give birth there, but long story short, I was able to get a referral, so if anyone is on active duty listening to this, hang in there. It’s hard. Sometimes you can’t get a referral. But I was able to get one thankfully and the practice in Virginia was an hour away so I would drive to the appointments. They were nice, but I didn’t see anyone consistently. I did move later on in my pregnancy, so it was hard to see every person because there were so many people that worked there.

I did have one experience before I decided to ultimately change to home birth. When I was 30 weeks pregnant, I was feeling menstrual-like cramps and it really concerned me because I know that could be a sign of labor contractions. They didn’t go away, so I called. It was a Saturday. I called the OB on call and she said, “Well, why don’t you ahead and come to the hospital? I’m working here. We’ll put you on some monitors and check.”

So I drove and I remember driving by myself and again, feeling really lonely because I was there by myself. My husband was with our son. It was late in the evening. His bedtime would have been soon. I called my doula and she offered to come with me because she’s awesome, but I was like, “No, it’s okay. I’ll just call and check up.” When I got to the hospital, I got checked in. I was crying and the nurse was like, “Oh my gosh, what’s going on?” She was really sweet.

But the OB popped her head in, looked, and she said something quickly, and walked away. Then I never saw her again. She had the midwife come in and talk to me. The midwife said, “Everything looks good. No contractions. You’re probably dehydrated. Let’s get you some fluids.” She asked to do a cervical check. We did a cervical check. I was at a 1, but she said that most women who have either given vaginal birth or have dilated to a 10 walk around at a 1 at any time. I was like, “Okay.”

Meagan: Or more. 1 or more.

Lindsey: I’m sure. I’m sure. She walked away and went to talk to the OB. She came back and said, “Okay, so OB would like you to start some steroids for the baby in case you go into labor.” I was like, “Wait, you just said that I’m fine.”

Meagan: I’m not in labor, yeah.

Lindsey: Right. I felt really conflicted. I wanted the best for my child. I was confused because I didn’t have any other signs of being in labor. There was a woman who was– it was the triage room so it’s just curtains. I heard a woman who was the same gestational age as me and she was at a 5 and in labor, so they were like, “Okay, we’re going to do this intervention and this intervention.” I thought in my mind, “That makes sense. This woman is in labor. I am not.” I felt really disappointed that the OB didn’t come and look me in the eye or talk to me, put her hand on my shoulder, find out that, “Hey, you just moved to a new area. You’re stressed out. Stress could make this happen,” which I found out later.

So I ultimately ended up declining and had a very healthy pregnancy. It was just that one time that I had that happen for about a week and everything was okay. He actually came a week past my due date, or eight days past my due date so no worries about being early.

That’s something and I’ll touch on this later too, as a provider, it’s so important to connect with your patient and in my specialty that I’m getting into, we talk about, “Listen to your patients. They’ll tell you what’s going on.” It’s not that we have to stand over them and make a clinical decision, it’s like, “Look at them. Hear what they have to say. They will tell you what the problem is even if they don’t know what it is. Their story will tell you.” So it’s so important that they do that. Find a provider that’s willing to listen.

So then at 35 weeks, I was actually listening to an episode of The VBAC Link on my lunch break and I texted my doula. I said, “You know, if I have a third child while we’re living here, I really think I’ll do a home birth.” She said to me, “It’s never too late” –I wrote it down– “to follow your gut and find the perfect birth team. I was like, “That’s nice to say that but that is way too stressful to try to figure out a home birth at 35 weeks pregnant, get a new referral from the military,” and I said, “I’ll look into it,” but it seemed really overwhelming. She was really encouraging.

Meagan: Very daunting.

Lindsey: Very daunting. She said that she would support me either way, but she did send me the names of a few midwives in the area. I ended up calling three and one had openings around my due date. I felt really connected to her right away. She put my mind at ease and she had worked with a lot of military families so she knew about my insurance. She actually has delivered over 2000 babies at this point, so tons of experience which was really nice to have.

Meagan: Kind of the opposite end of things.

Lindsey: The opposite end of things, yeah. We told her we would get back to her. I went home and presented it to Zach because I did all of this in one day. I just ended up having an extended lunch break and called then went back to my residency, then called more. I told my husband about it and he was like, “What?” At that time, we were doing a birth education class with our doula, so we were watching some of the videos that she sent us then we watched a video of the hospital room. He couldn’t finish the video of the hospital room.

I was like, “Babe if you can’t finish the video of the hospital room, how do you think it’s going to go if we get in there?” So we thought about it that day and prayed about it, then the next morning, he was like, “Yeah. Let’s do it.” I was like, “Okay. Now I need to think a little bit more,” so I took the rest of the week to think about it. We ultimately decided to do it.

I remember my first prenatal appointment with her was a few days after that and she spent over an hour with me. I kept looking at the time and I was like, “She’s got to go. She’s got other patients and I feel guilty.” It was weird. I felt this guilt of, “I’m taking up too much time from her.

Then I could tell by her demeanor though, she was in no rush to leave at all. Even when she walked out the door, she was just like, “Okay, yeah.”

So with that being said, her appointments were kind of a time range like, “I’ll be there around 2:00.” Sometimes it was later. Sometimes it was a little bit earlier so we had flexibility with our prenatal appointments. They were all at our home.

Meagan: Which is awesome.

Lindsey: Yeah, it was so nice. My HBAC story, at 8:00 PM, I had a few painful contractions the night before my son was born. I texted my doula and she recommended doing the Miles Circuit. Then I texted my midwife and she recommended I have a glass of wine or some Benadryl and go to sleep. I didn’t because, at the time, I was like, “Alcohol interrupts your sleep cycle. I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t.”

But I probably should have done some Benadryl or something because after I gave birth, I was talking to her about it and she said, because I had these irregular– maybe someone will connect with this– but I had these irregular contractions all night and I was so tired. She said, “Having some Benadryl probably would have helped you sleep and stopped the irregular contractions. I’m like, “Okay. The next time that happens, I will take Benadryl.”

But I go into the shower an hour later and that really helped to labor in the shower, just the hot water hitting my back. I was on my hands and knees and I really wanted to let my husband sleep because, in the back of my mind, I was thinking of what happened our first time. I just didn’t want that to happen again to him and to us.

But I didn’t feel like, “Oh, I just have to do this because I have to be strong for the two of us.” It felt like, “Okay, we’re a team. I’m able to do it myself right now and then at some point, I’ll need him to tap in, but I can do it now.” As much as you enjoy labor, I was like, “Okay, I can do this on my own,” so it was kind of a good time to just be with myself and my baby and think about what was ahead.

Zach did bring me a birth ball around 10:00 PM and I used that. At 11:00 PM, I tried to get some sleep. I couldn’t get comfortable. I took a nap in between contractions, but they kept waking me up. Then until basically 4:00 AM, they were 5-20 minutes apart so I would try to sleep on the floor but every time a contraction hit, I had to move and get up on my hands and knees. I felt like I just couldn’t stay still during the contraction.

At 4:00 AM, I was like, “Okay, I need Zach. I need some help.” He worked with me from 4:00-5:00 and did hip squeezes. He was super sweet and encouraging. Then we called my doula at 5:00 and she arrived around 5:30. She was like, “Okay, where are you feeling it?” I was pointing to my back and she said, “Let’s get this baby off of your back.” We did some Spinning Babies and this really helped the back labor. I mean, it was still labor, but it was all in the front at that point which was really helpful.

The contractions were more regular, still pretty far apart like 10 minutes apart. She said, “All right, you’re at a good place.” This was a little before 8:00. She said, “I’m actually feeling really sick by the way.” I was like, “Oh.” She said, ”I called my backup doula just in case, but I just want you to know where I’m at.” I was like, “Oh no, Lauren.” She’s like, “Nope, not about me. Don’t worry about me.” I was like, “Okay.” But at 8:00 AM, she left, and then within half an hour, it was all in my back and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I wanted to call her back right away but I also knew, “She is sick. I don’t know.” We waited a couple of hours and it actually ended up being a really sweet time for my husband and me because we talked and we prayed and we cried. We just talked about how different our life would be.

I mean, we had done that too before our second son was born, but it felt like that was such a special time to talk it out. I’m thankful for that. 10:30, I did call my doula back and she said was going to tough it out and come over, then the backup doula would be coming, but then she called me right back and said, “Lindsey, I have a fever. I’m so sorry.” I was like, “Oh no.” I didn’t want to expose myself to a fever and the baby, so she took care of all of that. The backup doula was going to be coming at 12:30 but I was like, “Oh gosh. I have to make it until 12:30.”

I found out two weeks before I was giving birth that my pastor’s wife is training to be a doula so I invited her to come. I don’t know her very well and I especially didn’t know her very well at the time, but I told her, “We’re going to know each other very well after this.” So we called her to come and it was nice because she is not a birth worker, but it was really beautiful to have her there and she was helping my husband at a few different points. Just watching her cry when the baby was born and I actually heard– jumping ahead here– but I actually heard my midwife telling her, “Okay, this,” and giving her tips.

Meagan: Tips and stuff?

Lindsey: Tips and stuff, yeah. That might bother some people, but maybe because I’ve been in school for so long myself, but I liked hearing it too so it ended up being a really beautiful thing. She was praying for us while everything was going on. The whole house was so peaceful. The backup doula ended up coming at 11:30. She came a little bit earlier at 11:30, then I had the pastor’s wife, and then when my midwife came, I felt so surrounded by loving, confident women and felt very safe. That’s something that I really wanted to feel was just like I knew everyone there. I felt really safe. That’s what I felt.

At this point, I was back in the shower when the doula arrived. Ashley is her name and I had never met her before. I turned off the shower and I was like, “Thank you for being here,” naked and sobbing. I hugged her. She said, “Okay, let’s do some Spinning Babies.” We did a few things and then at 12, it wasn’t even that long later, I was like, “I’ve got to go back to the shower.” So I was back to the shower and things continued to build up.

I get out. They called the midwife and Ashley had thought of a few things we could do with Spinning Babies. She and the midwife were immediately on the same page. The midwife was on her way. They were like, “Let’s have Lindsey do the side-lying release,” and I was like, “Nothing in me wants to get on the side of the bed.” I looked at her and I said, “I’m done. I’ve got to go to the hospital. I need meds. I tried. I can’t do it.” She was very, very kind and acknowledged what I had to say and said, “Let’s just try this.”

Meagan: Yeah. It’s such a hard thing as a doula because you’re like, “I know you want this and you’re saying this. I don’t want to ignore you and not take you seriously, to then later have you not feel heard or respected…”

Lindsey: I can only imagine.

Meagan: But you can see a different space than they can see. Yeah. It’s a hard space to be in.

Lindsey: Right, especially when you met them an hour ago.

Meagan: Yes. Oh, I can’t even imagine, yeah.

Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. I appreciated that she was validating me, but I was like, “No. I’ve got to go.” But then I was pacing the house in my diaper naked and Zach said I was walking around like a zombie. The little amount in me that could think reasonably was like, “Okay, if I have to go to the hospital then I have to get checked in, and then if I get checked in, then I have to wait for an epidural from the anesthesiologist, then I have to be in the car to get to the hospital. That’s going to take so long. Okay. Let’s just try it.” So I tried it through three contractions, then she had me flip over to the other side.

As soon as I flipped over to the other side, my water exploded. I was wearing those diapers and it felt like the water filled up like a water balloon in my diaper and then burst to the floor. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I looked down at the water and it was green. I stood up and I was like, “Ashley!” I was hysterical. I was like, “It’s not clear. It’s not clear.” She was like, “I’ve been to a lot of births. It’s something that happens. We’ll talk to your midwife and see what she has to say.” It really ramped up. I went back to the shower. I remember I ran to the shower and turned it on. When I got in, it was cold, but the water warmed up.

Meagan: Yeah, but shocking.

Lindsey: Shocking, a cold shower, yeah. I was gasping. Then the water warmed up and I started screaming. She really was helping me through the contractions and was like, “Keep it low,” and so sweet in how she did it. I was just following her voice. So really, my husband at this point, when the doula was there, he was like, “I’m going to let her help my wife.” I didn’t feel like, “Where is my husband?” I felt like, “Okay, this is good. I’m glad that Ashley is helping me.” Actually, I found out later that he went and cleaned up my water. He was like, “I have something to do,” and he cleaned it up.

She reminded me, I failed to mention that when I did want to go the hospital, she reminded me, “When you get to this point, I know you’ve listened to a lot of birth education and listened to a lot of podcasts,” you know that this means that you are really close. It just didn’t feel real. I was like, “Yeah, but they were close. I don’t think that I’m close.”

Meagan: It’s not possible that I’m the same.

Lindsey: I just felt like it was not possible, no. I did find this out later too because Jennifer, my midwife, wasn’t worried about the water. She said, “The color of the water, when it’s bright green, usually means that a baby is in distress, but when it’s brown and murky, it just means that the baby is old and has been in there for a while.” Again, he was eight days past his due date because I asked her later, “Why weren’t you concerned about it?” So she said that it was fine. That was good to know.

Meagan: Yeah, very good to know.

Lindsey: Yeah, so then I get in the shower. I had the mucus plug come out, the bloody show, and then things were ramping up. The midwife gets here and they want me to get out. I started to make a grunting noise. I was like, “Oh my gosh. Did I actually just do that?” Ashley said, “Are you feeling pushy?” I said, “I don’t know. I think so, maybe.” Then the midwife arrived and she was checking the water. She said, “The water is not warm enough,” because I had used all of the hot water. They were filling up the tub and the water was gone, so my husband was boiling water in the kitchen because there’s a certain threshold for the temperature that it has to be.

I still didn’t believe even though I was making grunting noises that I was going to give birth. I still thought, “I’m going to have to go to the hospital.” They tried to get me to sit on the toilet, and I can’t. I was like, “No.” I go to sit down and then I would get back up. I know the toilet is a dilation station and I was like, “Oh, I just can’t do it.” When she arrived, my midwife put her hand on my lower back. She never did a cervical check. She put her hand on my lower back. She said to my husband, I found out later, that I was probably a 7 or 8 when she got there. I asked her how she knew that and she said she would feel the tailbone push out and then the back of my buttcrack is a darker color. I was like, “Oh, interesting.”

I’m in the tub and they are adding hot water. I am pushing and they don’t have to coach me. I’m doing it. They’re encouraging m– my doula and my midwife– but my body just knew how to do it which was so cool. I did start to feel the ring of fire which actually to me didn’t feel that bad because the whole labor felt really bad.

Meagan: It didn’t to me either. It just felt like I had a whole ton of pressure. I just remember pressure. I don’t remember the full, full ring of fire.

Lindsey: No. Oh wait, I did forget one thing. I didn’t want to forget this. I didn’t think I could do it when I started to get to almost pushing. I think I must have said something. I should ask my husband. I must have said something because my midwife gave me a pep talk and she said, “Okay. Would it help you if you felt your baby’s head, like a little bit of biofeedback?” As a dentist, we talk to patients about different things like biofeedback so I was like, “Yeah, that connects with me.” I was like, “I don’t know how to do it.” She said, “Reach down, feel, and then you’ll feel something firm and squishy. It won’t feel like you.” I was like, “Okay.” Then I did. I was like, “Oh my gosh. He’s there.” That was definitely a big motivator for me.

I didn’t do that with my first son. They had offered and I was like, “Oh gosh, no. I don’t want to,” but I think that it was very helpful. There is a mental hurdle to giving birth. I think VBAC moms, I don’t want to say more of a hurdle, but I think we do.

Meagan: Sometimes we have extra stuff. We just do. We just do.

Lindsey: Yeah, so setting yourself up for success if it is touching your baby’s head. That was my point when I had to have the Cesarean was when I was pushing, so that pushed me through the threshold. It was mental at that point. The baby was coming. I just had to work with my body to do it. My husband has a funny memory of me when I was in the birth pool. I was holding both sides because there were the sides of the tub. I literally am roaring and I felt like I was roaring. I was like, “Come on.” My son’s name is Finn. I was like, “Come on, Finn. Let’s get this over with,” and just roaring him out.

My doula was standing in front of me. He was like, “You were just yelling in her face.” It took me an hour to push which sounds like a long time but didn’t feel like a long time at all. I held him and I cried. Zach was crying. The picture that I sent is really cool because you can see my husband tearing up in it. The pastor’s wife cried. Ashley was crying. Except for our midwife, she was cracking jokes the whole time not in a disrespectful way, but she kept the mood really light. I didn’t notice because I was in labor land, but my husband said that it was really nice. It kept him calm because she was so chill.

She said to me later actually when I got in bed that my son didn’t cry right away but she checked. Actually, my doula recorded it so I could hear her. She checked the pulse and the cord. She wasn’t concerned that the baby didn’t cry right away because she felt that the pulse was really good. In the video, she was like, “He’s just getting ready to take his first breath,” really calm. She said to me later that she did do a little bit of suctioning which I was like, “No, that’s fine. I didn’t have a problem with that.” I say that because everything was so considerate. For all of the questions that were asked or what she did, she wanted to let me know. I could have never known that she did suctioning ever but she wanted me to know. I just thought that was really cool.

She has me quickly get out of bed. I didn’t think it was quick, but we talked in our debrief later that it was quick because she saw that I was bleeding but no placenta came out, so she wanted to figure out where it was coming from. She had a really cool way of testing or trying to triage me without me knowing. At one point, I did pick up on it because she asked, “Are you feeling any pain in your arm?” Then I was like, “Oh, she’s checking my heart. I know that from being a dentist?” She would just ask low-key questions but was trying to make sure everything was all right.

Meagan: Without making you feel like it.

Lindsey: Panic. She was like, “Okay, we’re going to check your blood pressure.” Blood pressure was 100/40 so she said, “All right, Lindsey, let’s start you with some IVs,” I was like, “I don’t care. Do anything. I have my baby on my chest. Do whatever you want.” She said, “You have some bleeding. We’re going to try to see where it’s coming from and get the placenta out.” She had me try to push and I was like, “I feel like I can’t. I have no urge to push.” She said, “All right. I can try,” so she tried to pull it but then the cord was feeling like it was going to separate so she said, “Okay, I’m not going to do that.”

Sorry, when they started the IV, she was like, “I would like to give you a shot of PItocin.” I was like, “Okay, yeah. Go for it.” So she gave me a shot of Pitocin in my leg. It turns out that she was concerned about the bleeding. She was like, “I’ve got to figure out where this is coming from.” At that point, she had tried to pull it out. She wasn’t able to so she said, “Okay, Lindsey. I need you to push the placenta out.” I was like, “Okay.” So I pushed it out and she said, “I’m sorry. I have to be really mean and press on your abdomen,” so she really got on there to make sure that I wasn’t hemorrhaging or anything.

The birth assistant was stuck in traffic so she had just arrived at that point. She had her check too and she did find a small tear, a first-degree tear. Oh, sorry. I wasn’t going to do this but I’m going to do this one time. When I did feel that ring of fire, she said at that point, “Okay. Put your hand down there and where you are feeling burning, move the tissue out of the way,” so I think that helped.

She told me in a prenatal visit that she has women do that because she can try to feel or try to guess where they might tear, but when moms do it, it usually is really successful because they can feel it. I thought that would be really interesting. I did have that first-degree tear, but she said, “You probably don’t need a stitch, but I’d like to go ahead and do it because you have blood.” I said, “Yeah, fine.” So we did it. It was a venous tear so that’s why it ended up bleeding more. The bleeding stopped. We weighed the baby and they did the tuck-in service.

My in-laws were in town. They actually are the best and they were supposed to fly back to California that day because they came two weeks early. They came a week before my due date and stayed a week past because we thought the baby would be born then but he wasn’t. They were flying out that day but they canceled their flight and stayed because I had gone into labor the night before they left so they were with our one-and-a-half-year-old. They ended up saying, “We’re just going to get a hotel room and you guys hang out,” which was nice to have that time with just Zach and I and our new little baby boy.

After my HBAC, we were sitting on the bed with our second son and just so thankful. I asked my husband how he was feeling because I was curious about this experience. Would it be different than the hospital? He said that he was feeling great. He felt like in the hospital, he couldn’t really do much. The doula didn’t take over but he would try to support me in labor, but then he was like, “Well, what else do I do?” He felt like being at home, he put water in the tub. He cleaned up my water. At one point, he even said, “I put the dishes away.”

That night in bed, he did have a little bit of shaking, but I think his sympathetic nervous system was so ramped up. That happens. The specialty I’m getting into is pain– head and neck pain. Oral-facial pain is what it’s called. We have patients with chronic pain, people who have undergone post-traumatic stress and TBI, or I should say have post-traumatic stress disorder or TBI and their sympathetic nervous system is ramped up.

It’s designed like a zebra outrunning a lion. You’ll see a zebra shake after it’s done and shake it all out. But a zebra doesn’t keep thinking, “What if that lion would have caught me? What if I would have lost the let?” Zebras just move on. But we as people are the ones that think about, “What if?” So that’s what causes that sympathetic nervous system to keep staying on.

Anyway, so he had a little bit of the shakes. I was thinking through that and one of the things that we have patients do for chronic pain patients, it can also help with anxiety, and it can also help lower your blood pressure. Feel free to link this and look into it because there is a lot of evidence-based research on it. I’m saying that to all of the listeners too. It’s called diaphragmatic breathing. I highly recommend it just in general for any type of chronic pain. It’s really helpful but there have been studies of people lowering their blood pressure.

I was like, “All right, honey.” We were in bed. I was like, “We’re going to do some diaphragmatic breathing.” We did some diaphragmatic breathing and it really helped him calm down. What it does is it activates your vagus nerve which is that fight or flight reflex responsible, that nerve that innervates and starts up the fight or flight. It helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system to calm your body down. So that’s what I did and it was awesome.

Meagan: I love that.

Lindsey: Yeah. One more thing to go over after this, but to show where we are now, I did go back to work and this is my second week back, so very timely. My husband did a full week by himself with the kids and there was lots of crying because my baby doesn’t take a bottle during the day which is another story and also stressful. We’re working on it. The baby’s been crying a lot and is hungry. I asked him last night, “Okay, I’m on the podcast tomorrow. Let’s give a full update.” He said, “I have not felt any anxiety at all.” I was like, “That is so awesome.”

Meagan: Oh awesome.

Lindsey: Right after the birth we talked about it, I was like, “Do you feel like you would have had this in the hospital?” He was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I would have because I would have had the same smells, same sights.” He and I both feel like the total change of environment was what was best for our family and really helped my success in my HBAC and for him too. I really do think that I would have gotten an epidural 100% if I was in the hospital. I was so close so I just wonder, “Would that have hindered me?” Who knows? You can’t play those games. You never know.

Meagan: It’s hard to know. It’s hard to know. I believe that if I were in a hospital for the second, and this is not to say anything bad about a hospital birth–

Lindsey: No, no definitely not.

Meagan: I probably would have had an epidural too and I do believe that I probably would have had a third Cesarean but it’s so hard to know. I’m curious, maybe not. I have no idea.

Lindsey: Right, yeah. Absolutely.

Meagan: Oh man.

Lindsey: I have one last little thing I want to go over. Thank you. So one of the key components I think that was missing from my first birth was education. At almost every prenatal appointment, my midwife would say, “Any questions?” Almost every single time, I didn’t. I guess I trusted her and not that you shouldn’t trust your providers but I didn’t even know what to ask so that’s why I recommend your podcast to first-time moms too because then you know what to ask.

I did some reading. I definitely did some reading and I did the hospital birth class. I did a class with our doula too, a birth class with our first doula, but I did so much more the second time around. My point is that definitely finding a provider you can trust and you can feel like you can ask those questions or who would maybe even prompt you with what questions to ask is so helpful because being informed as a patient– I strive to build that rapport and trust with my patients every time. I tell them this, “We’re working together as a team and I want you to do your own research and I want to work with you to determine the best plan for you,” because when you feel empowered and informed, you have better outcomes.

I really felt like birth happened to me the first time around and then the second time, I was actively a part of my birth which was really a powerful thing.

Meagan: Very, very, very powerful. That’s something I was going to say. Even if it doesn’t go the way you want, you can still be the driver in the driver’s seat. We know that with babies and birth, things go certain ways and everything but you can still be empowered.

Lindsey: Thank you for saying that. I actually had that thought to say to share that too. Birth is crazy and you never know how it’s going to go or what’s going to happen but you would know, “Okay. I did all of the research beforehand and I can rest in the fact that it’s okay. We made the best decision at the time given the information that we had.”

Meagan: Absolutely.

Lindsey: I’m just going to read if it’s okay, a quick list because I am a list person and I listened to all of your VBAC Links. I gathered my own list. Everyone’s list of how to have a VBAC might look different but this is my list.

Meagan: Yay, I love it.

Lindsey: I’m a list person for all of you guys out there. I did listen to as many birth stories as possible. If I would have started sooner, I would have listened more, but my number one on Spotify in 2022 was The VBAC Link. I had listened to 206 episodes. I know there were almost all of the 206 episodes at the time. Almost all of them, not quite. I did learn things like the risks and benefits of Pitocin, what the labor shakes were, how having a tight pelvic floor can prevent baby from descending, how important movement is in labor, and coached pushing versus self-directed pushing.

I learned a lot about breathwork. There’s a really good YouTube video by Bridget Teyler that my doula told me about.

Meagan: Bridget’s awesome.

Lindsey: And then your podcast too talked about breathing. The low tones are so important. I didn’t know that the first time around. I did see a chiropractor once a week for the majority of my pregnancy starting really in the second trimester. When we moved here, I couldn’t find a Webster-based chiropractor in my area but I saw a corporate practice called The Joint. The woman there was trained in Webster. She just wasn’t certified because she doesn’t pay an annual fee to get the certification. Something to think about there.

I did drink the tea, the red raspberry leaf tea, and ate the Medjool dates at 37 weeks. Spinning Babies, I started that three to five days a week. I didn’t do as many intense workouts as I did with my first son. I really did a lot of walking partially because I had so many Braxton Hicks and partially because of hearing that having a tight pelvic floor can prevent the baby from descending.

Hydrotherapy– I did so much of that during labor. I squeezed a comb through every single contraction. The comb was the comb that we brought home from my first birth that they give you at the hospital so it was kind of poetic. By the end, the comb was very destroyed from all of my squeezing.

I did write down my fears and emotions with the birth. I did boil it down to three that I was feeling. I told my doula and my midwife about them. I was like, “In case I stall in labor, I just want you to know.” I tried to really turn the fear/tension/pain cycle to not give in to the fear through every contraction. I’d turn that into prayer. Every contraction is helping my body to move down my baby and to work with that. I remember, and I would say that Pitocin contractions were worse than actual contractions, but I do remember that I was bracing every one like, “Oh no. Another one is coming.” I’d fight every contraction. It was still hard, but I tried to work with my body instead of pushing them away, then moving every 15 minutes to a new position in labor.

Meagan: Such a powerful list right there.

Lindsey: Oh, thank you. Hopefully, if someone is like, “Oh, my VBAC might be tomorrow, maybe they can listen to this episode and get some tips at the end there in the final hour.”

Meagan: Yes, the final hour. The final countdown. I love it. Thank you so much and huge congrats.

Lindsey: Thank you. Thank you.

Meagan: Congrats. What a crazy journey to go from moving and finding providers, then changing and even changing doulas in the very end. You had change up until the very end.

Lindsey: The very end. I didn’t even think about that. That’s true.

Meagan: Yeah, you really did. Awesome. I’m so happy to hear that everything is going well right now and your husband is going better. That’s really awesome.

Lindsey: Thank you. It’s really good, really, really good. Thank you so much. I’m just so honored to be here and to see you face to face and just thank you for all that you do.

Meagan: Thank you.

Closing

Would 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.

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