Episode 204 Sarah-Ann's VBA2C + Misconceptions/Reasons for C-Sections

The VBAC Link

We polled our social media followers asking what more you’d like to see from The VBAC Link. You asked for more stories about vaginal births after multiple Cesareans. Well, today is that day. We LOVE our VBAMC mamas!

Sarah-Ann joins us from Canada to share her beautiful journey of healing and empowerment through her two Cesarean birth experiences, lots of research, a supportive community, and The VBAC Link podcast. She gives so many great ideas on how to prepare physically, spiritually, and mentally for a VBA2C.

Sarah-Ann defied the doctors who told her that her pelvis was too small and that a VBAC after two C-sections was literally impossible. Sarah-Ann, we applaud your courage and are so proud of you!

Additional links

The VBAC Link Facebook Community

The VBAC Link Blog: Why Failure to Progress is Usually Failure to Wait

Five Minute Fear Release Video

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words.

Meagan: Hello, hello. This is Meagan with The VBAC Link. I still don’t know when it’s going to be normal for me to not have Julie on here with me. It’s still so weird to not say this is Julie and Meagan, but this is Meagan and I’m so excited to be with you guys today. Back when school was starting, I posted on social media and asked people what they would like to see from The VBAC Link now that all of my kids are in school full time. I’m really going to be diving in on The VBAC Link. A lot of people said that they want more stories of vaginal birth after two Cesareans.

Today is that day. We have a VBA2C story with you today. We have our friend, Sarah-Ann, and she is going to talk about her journey through her two C-sections and then her VBAC. Before we started recording, we talked about a lot of similarities between her and my history with Cesarean and how crazy it is that if you go through so many people’s journeys, and if you go through all of these episodes, you’re going to find a lot of similarities with misconceptions. Some of those misconceptions are a small pelvis, a big baby, your body can’t dilate, failure to progress, and all of these things.

She has similar things like I did in my story, so I’m excited to hear more about what she went through and how she navigated through into a vaginal birth after two C-sections. At the end, we are going to talk a little bit more about those misconceptions and what we can do to avoid them and educate ourselves so that if they do come up, we know how to navigate that.

Review of the Week

Meagan: Of course, I have a Review of the Week, so I’m going to jump right into that, and then we will get into this wonderful story. This is from Renee. It’s from Apple Podcasts. Her tag is, Re-nee-nee, but I’m thinking it’s Renee. It says, “Best Podcast Ever. I am so happy I found this podcast. I had a C-section in early 2019 after two days of failed induction. It really caused a lot of stress on me and even though recovery was fine, my emotions were all over the place. I knew the minute we started trying for our second, I wanted to try for a VBAC. Listening to these stories helped me become so educated and confident in my body. I did have my successful VBAC last month and couldn’t be happier. I’ve learned that believing in yourself and having a provider in your corner really makes all the difference. Julie and Meagan are inspirational, positive, and so easy to listen to.”

Aww, that makes me so happy. Thank you, Renee, or Re-nee-nee. Congrats on your VBAC and thank you for sharing with us. Just like she said, there are so many factors that come into play when going for a VBAC and not even just for a VBAC, just having a baby in general. You really want to have that supportive provider who supports the desires of the way you want to birth. You want to have a supportive community feel whether it be a doula, family member, of course, birth partner, you want everyone in your space to be in your corner. It really does make a difference.

If you haven’t already, please leave us a review. I love seeing the emails come in and adding them to this queue so we can read them here on the podcast. You can leave them on Apple Podcasts, Google, and Facebook. You can email us. You can Instagram message us. You can Facebook message us. Google review, wherever you are, you can leave a review. We would love it and we may just be reading your review on the next podcast.

Sarah-Ann’s story

Meagan: Okay, Ms. Sarah-Ann.

Sarah-Ann: Hello!

Meagan: Are you excited? I’m so excited.

Sarah-Ann: I’m very excited, yes.

Meagan: I really appreciate you being here today and like I said, so many of our followers are wanting more vaginal birth after multiple Cesarean stories because sadly, in today’s world, it’s harder to not even achieve but to find a provider to support you in vaginal birth after multiple Cesareans. So thank you for being here today and I’m so excited about your story.

Do you have anything that you’d like to tell our audience before you’d like to dive into your story?

Sarah-Ann: You know, I think I’m just really excited to share my story and like you said, the provider thing is huge which I will touch on, and then yeah. I’m very, very excited. I applied two years ago to be on the podcast, and so when I got that email, I pretty much jumped for joy.

Meagan: I know. We took our big, long break and everything. It’s so good to be back. I’m loving all of the stories and it is so fun. We have seriously so many podcast submissions. It was so fun to go back to some of the old ones and send out those emails and see. Because yeah, we sent out a lot of emails and it was like, boom. Scheduled! We are so grateful for you. I would love to turn the time over to you to share these beautiful stories of yours.

Sarah-Ann: Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much for that. I think the way that I want to kick things off is that I want to touch a little bit on prebaby because it kind of tells the full story. But before I do, I just want to mention a trigger warning. I will touch on the topic of miscarriage.

When my husband and I finally decided that we were going to start trying for a baby, I was very, very naive when it came to anything regarding planning for a baby, the conception process, and just the overall pregnancy journey. So when I did get pregnant after three or four months of trying, I was absolutely elated. I immediately began planning everything, but what actually ended up happening was that I had a miscarriage. I found out at about the 9-week mark just at a routine ultrasound that the baby had stopped growing around 5-6 weeks.

I felt very, very betrayed by my body and very angry that I had lost this opportunity to enjoy any sort of, in my mind at the time, it was being able to enjoy any future pregnancies. That ignorant bliss, I guess, for a lack of a better word. But what ended up happening was that I was actually pregnant within one cycle after the miscarriage. To put it into perspective, I had a D&C on April 11th, and then by June 10th, I had a positive pregnancy test in my hand.

I really didn’t allow myself a lot of time to grieve or go through the process of all the emotions from the miscarriage which, subsequently, also carried into my second pregnancy. With my first baby, I was pregnant with my firstborn and I quite literally was a complete puddle of emotion the entire pregnancy. Anything that I felt or I didn’t feel created extreme anxiety for me. I literally worried about everything.

Because of that experience of going through the miscarriage, I let fear play a large role in how my pregnancy played out. I think that parts of it actually contributed to my C-section. For example, I stopped moving in any way. I stopped exercising. I was quite an active person before getting pregnant, but I had all of these fears in my mind that can sometimes spiral. I let that fear eat away at me, so I stopped exercising. I really indulged in that whole eating-for-two mentality. Outside of staying away from the recommended foods to avoid, I didn’t really eat healthy which actually led to quite a bit of weight gain.

So aside from that, going back to this whole theme of being very naive because I feel like the topic of pregnancy and preparing for childbirth is not a widely discussed conversation at least in the OB world. I did have an OB and pretty much, I listened to anything and everything that he told me. I really did not know that I had a choice in anything at all or if I had the ability to have questions.

I remember being close to full term and being told at one point, “Okay, we’re going to do a sweep today at this appointment.” I had no idea what that was. I actually didn’t even know that I had the option to decline. For other examples, I remember my doctor talking to me about pain management and being told that I needed to get an epidural.

He said that it’s completely unnecessary for women to try to do childbirth without any pain intervention and upon reflection, I was really only educated on the things that the practice I was at wanted me to know or had opinions on, so I really didn’t know that I had alternative choices offered.

Meagan: And he wasn’t making it sound like there were any either.

Sarah-Ann: No, no. Pretty much was just like, “This is the way it is. This is what you need to do.”

Meagan: Yeah.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah, and so when I finally did go into labor, they were actually very, very inconsistent and all over the place for over 24 hours. I actually didn’t know what was going on. I was like, “Why isn’t labor picking up? It’s been over 24 hours.” But what I didn’t realize at the time was that this could possibly be a sign of a poorly positioned baby.

I also had an anterior placenta. I think it’s important to note that I reclined for most of my pregnancy. For those who follow the Spinning Babies, for example, my belly button was always straight up in the air for most of my pregnancy. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, my baby was actually OP.

I think it was sometime around 2 centimeters that I went into the hospital. I was immediately admitted within the hour even though I was still in very, very early labor. In hindsight, I wish I had actually been sent home to continue moving and trying to get labor to pick up a little bit more on its own. They requested the epidural even though I wasn’t really in a whole lot of pain. But again, going back to that conditioning that I had been told by my doctor, “Just get the epidural right away.”

So again, I’m only at about 2-3 centimeters. I’ve now had the epidural. I’m completely laid up in bed on my back. Nobody has offered for me to be turned. Nobody has offered me a peanut ball, for example. My doctor comes in around 4 centimeters. He says, “Let’s just get things moving. I’m going to break your water and we’ll get you on Pitocin. Let’s get things moving along.”

Baby was completely fine at this point. There were really no contradictions to anything that was happening. It was more or less just him saying, “Let’s pick things up.” I lay in bed for the next five hours. Again, not moving, just completely on my back and unsurprisingly, the doctor came in five hours later, I was still at 4 centimeters and had not progressed at all. He just basically said, “You know what? We need to do a C-section.” Because of the miscarriage that I had gone through and all of the things leading up to that point, I pretty much just agreed.

So that was my firstborn. It was a little girl. She came in weighing 7 pounds and 15 ounces.

Meagan: Which is a perfect size.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah, yeah. I really didn’t have a whole lot of ill feelings towards that labor and delivery. I honestly just thought it was a one-off. Again, not being educated and being very naive, I just figured that was just what happened that time around and the next time would be totally different and I would just have a VBAC.

I got pregnant with my second 10 months later, so 10 months after my C-section. My oldest two are about 20 months apart. I was more relaxed this time around, but I still didn’t take the opportunity to educate myself. I did switch providers and go with more of a primary network of care providers here in Edmonton. I had this one doctor. She was my one doctor for all of the prenatal care, but the doctors who delivered the babies were on a rotational basis. There was an opportunity to do a meet and greet, but it was kind of like a you-get-who-you-get when you go into labor kind of thing.

And so again, as I was reflecting and going through my notes for this session, it’s funny how some of those red flags actually come up with some of the things that were told to me by my provider. I wanted to share some examples. One of the things that was said to me was, “You know, if you’re feeling really anxious in any way about this delivery because you’ve already had a C-section, you could literally walk into a hospital right now and they have to give you a C-section.” So no talk or encouragement about a VBAC at this point. It was just like, “Go get your C-section.”

Another thing that was said was, “Please know if things don’t work out the way that you want them to, you will never again have the opportunity to try for a VBAC.” So again, all of this conditioning was going into my mind. It just adds a lot of pressure, so in my mind at the time, I’m thinking, “Oh my goodness. If I don’t have a VBAC this time around, I’ll never get the opportunity to do it again.”

And then the third quote I wanted to share was, I had asked my provider, “Does this impact fertility and future children if I have to have a C-section this time around?” She was like, “No, no, no, no, no. You can have as many C-sections as you want. It doesn’t affect anything in any way. I once saw a woman who had ten C-sections.” She actually said this in a very admirable tone and so it was almost like it was very glamorized. Again, reflecting I’m like, “Why did I not recognize these red flags?”

If I’m comparing it to my first as well, I think I had a very similar pregnancy. Again, I did not engage in the healthiest of lifestyles, did not exercise, and didn’t eat properly. I gained a considerable amount of weight, reclined my entire pregnancy, and when I started to get close to term, I started to stress a crazy amount. I stressed and stressed and stressed. I was like, “Why am I not going into labor? I need to go into labor early. This baby is just getting bigger,” and so it just compounded on top of everything else that I was going through from a mental perspective knowing in my mind, thinking at the time, “You’ll never get the chance to do this again if you don’t have your VBAC.” So just very, very stressed.

I opted for two or three sweeps a week. I tossed and turned every night just desperately waiting for any sign of labor to come. Labor actually did start on its own eventually. I was about a week past due and it was a very identical pattern to my first. Very inconsistent, irregular contractions all over the place, would not pick up, just stop-start. Again, not realizing at the time that my baby was an OP baby. I did have an anterior placenta this time around as well.

I went to the hospital again too early in very, very early labor but because I was a past C-section mom, I was immediately admitted. You start to get those individuals who start to come to talk. They share their views and perceptions on C-sections and VBACs as well. I remember being tracked down in the hall at one point when I was walking through my contractions and the nurse said, “Oh, I just talked to your doctor. She wants to break your water. It’s not going to do anything other than picking things up. What do you say?”

I honestly didn’t know at the time that if you break your water too early and baby is in a poor position that this can make them more or less be further stuck, right?

Meagan: Right, yeah. Which, in your first birth, I’m like, “Okay, OP baby. 4 centimeters. Water breaks. Baby comes down OP. It’s going to take longer to dilate.”

Sarah-Ann: Yeah, exactly.

Meagan: Right? Mhmm.

Sarah-Ann: Pretty much the exact same thing was happening with this second baby. So now that my water was broken, I needed the epidural because the contractions were so strong. I made it to about 6 centimeters this time around. I was so frozen, though, from the epidural. I couldn’t even wiggle my toes. It was just cranked to the max.

Baby went into distress at this point. They called for a second opinion. I was actually very, very devastated at this point around that I knew things were starting to look like a C-section. A seasoned doctor came in and something happened to me that was actually very, very profound and played a very, very large role in my third pregnancy which was my VBAC after 2 C-sections. He did a check on me and he said, “Your baby is sunny-side up and your pelvis is shaped like a V.” He held his index finger and his middle finger up in a V shape. He said, “Baby is not going to come.”

I’ll touch on that when I go into my third pregnancy, but just that single moment right there of him telling me that I had this V-shaped pelvis which later on, in my mind, I thought was an Android-shaped pelvis. It really played a large mental game for me.

So baby was born. He was born stunned and very unresponsive. It was quite traumatic and I do recall a lot of Code Pink being shouted over and over. It was pretty much a whirlwind of a birth and very, very traumatic. He was my second born, a little boy. He weighed 9 pounds and 5 ounces. He was quite a bit bigger. But in hindsight, nothing that I think I would have had trouble with if the baby had been better positioned.

He actually ended up having to be in the NICU for a few days. While he was in the NICU, I was recovering in my room. This one nurse came in and she was so kind. I remember her so vividly in my mind. I actually only ever saw her once. She never came back after that. She said something to me. She said, I was telling her how disappointed and sad I was that I didn’t get my VBAC. She said in the most casual tone ever, “Well, maybe your next one will be your VBAC.” It was so profound for me. I was like, “How could this experienced labor nurse be telling me something that apparently all of these doctors had been telling me that I could never have a VBAC after 2 C-sections?”

I was like, “Wait a minute. What are you telling me? This is an actual thing?” This actually opened up a whole new door because, at this point, I was starting to realize in my mind that there was not a consistent form of care or approach to C-sections and VBACs as I had originally thought. I just thought that this was the rule and this was the way it was and that’s the way it had to be. But obviously, it’s not the truth.

Meagan: Well, and you are not alone out there. A lot of people do. A lot of people will have conversations with me. I talk about what I do all the time and they will say, “What do you do?” I say that I talk about birth after Cesarean options and they are like, “Well, there aren’t any options so what do you talk about?” And I’m like, “There actually are options.” Then we talk about my story and they are like, “No you didn’t.” Yeah, I did.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah, yeah. It’s just crazy. So it was actually as I reflect on everything as a whole, that was a very distinct moment in my memory that really changed the course of things for me for my future pregnancy. So at my 6-week follow-up appointment after having my second C-section, I actually went and saw this doctor who had delivered my son. I asked him about a VBAC the next time around. He was so hesitant. He shook his head. He was so reluctant. He said, “Your baby would need to be less than 7 pounds for you to even be able to do it. No doctor in their right mind will induce you.”

So again with the misinformation, right? These doctors had different opinions as far as the way things should be done and how things should be done. They say it to you as a matter of fact as opposed to their opinion. So it really plays on you having to try and decipher what is truth in this, what is maybe not necessarily the truth, but at that point, I had already had a sudden thirst for the truth. I remember going home and putting out this post. In Canada here, we have this Canada-wide baby forum where you can ask all of these anonymous questions for all of these different groups.

So in the VBAC group, I had asked this question. I said, “Is this true what this doctor told me?” This one woman responded to me and she was like, “It’s not like they can tie you down to a table and force you to have a C-section.” I was like, “Whoa.” This was just like all of this light opening up in front of me. I was like, “Okay. Things are going to be different the next time around.”

I knew going into my third pregnancy because we wanted to have three children, I knew things would be different this time around. I actually got pregnant with my third. My youngest two are exactly two years apart, so when I got pregnant with her, I actually started my preparations well in advance of being pregnant with her because I was very determined to do everything differently from the start.

Even before I was pregnant, for that year leading up to me even trying to conceive with my husband, I began preparing my body before I was even pregnant. I brought my BMI down to, I think it was about a 23. I exercised regularly. I enrolled in hot yoga because I wanted to learn how to loosen my body and take a little bit more of a holistic approach to taking care of myself. I actually started going to, this was pre-COVID, we had a VBAC support group here in Edmonton that I had come across, so I started attending some of those meetings before COVID happened.

Really, any information that I could find on VBACs after two Cesareans, I literally devoured immediately. I think this was at this point that I came across The VBAC Link which quite honestly changed my life both from an information perspective and also a community perspective because as you know, the community there is huge, huge, huge.

Meagan: Yeah.

Sarah-Ann: Everyone is so supportive, so it was really quite literally life-changing.

Meagan: I know. I love the Facebook community and our little private group. Everyone is so sweet in there. There is so much love.

Sarah-Ann: Yes, yeah. Regardless of the outcome, like you said, there is just so much love and support.

Meagan: Mhmm.

Sarah-Ann: So yeah. I actually did some research on placentas because I had read that there is an increased chance of OP babies when you have an anterior placenta. It’s funny. I’m by nature a stomach sleeper. I always have been. I have read that when you’re trying to conceive that if you sleep on your back, you have a higher chance of a posterior placenta. I don’t really know if there is any truth to that, but I will say that I changed from being a stomach sleeper to a back sleeper while I was trying to conceive my third baby.

Meagan: Interesting.

Sarah-Ann: Yes and I ended up having a posterior placenta.

Meagan: Really? Oh my goodness. I’m actually a back sleeper too and I always worried about having an anterior placenta. I always ended up having a posterior placenta, but wow.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah. I can’t even remember where I came across that information, but I told my midwife that too and she had the same reaction. She’s like, “That makes sense.” I was like, “Yeah.”

Meagan: Yeah, gravity.

Sarah-Ann: Exactly, just the natural law of gravity.

Meagan: Interesting, okay.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah. Some of the other things I did, I had seen I think it was Julie who did a 5-minute fear release video on YouTube.

Meagan: Oh yes, she did.

Sarah-Ann: Yep, yep. I started to recognize the importance of not only physical preparation like healing my body but also the mental component as well. So healing your mind for it, working through all of those fears, working through the trauma. I saw a birth trauma therapist to work through some of the trauma from my second birth.

I wanted to touch on this as well. I did this emotion code therapy as well. I’m not sure how many people are too familiar with it. It’s kind of like a form of Reiki but basically, it was developed by this chiropractor actually. Basically, what it is, it works on releasing trapped emotional energy in certain parts of your body to try and release the negative energy that is being housed there from past trauma.

Meagan: Love that.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah. I guess it’s a profound thing that happened to me during one of the sessions. I was working with this woman and we were going through the session. She was working on releasing this energy with me. I had never told her ever, never discussed really with anyone that I had a miscarriage. While she was working on my pelvis, she stopped so suddenly and looked at me. She said, “I’m so sorry to ask this, but have you ever had a miscarriage before?”

I was so taken aback. I was like, “Um, yes I have.” I was really caught off guard. She said, “I’m so sorry to be abrasive and ask this question so frank to you, but your baby just told me that it was the baby from the miscarriage and that it’s come back to you.” And she started crying.

Meagan: Whoa.

Sarah-Ann: Even I get choked up thinking about it. Obviously, tears were flowing down my face. For those who are active in the spiritual community or have the belief in a higher faith or a higher belief and have that faith, this was really profound for me. It was really a full-circle experience that I was going through.

I did want to mention that as well because it was something that was really special that I experienced during the pregnancy.

Meagan: That’s pretty unique too. It’s a unique thing to hear and be told and to have her feel that. That’s pretty cool.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and to hear her cry. To see the emotion, because I feel like people can just say that here and there, but just to see the emotion in her face and to see the overwhelm that she was going through, I was like, “Wow. This is intense.”

But yeah, so it was pretty profound. And then just some of the other things that I did differently this time around, when I did eventually find out I was pregnant, I was like, “Okay.” I applied for a midwife. I hired a doula. I enrolled in Hypnobabies classes. There were so many things that I did differently this time around. I was very, very active. I did cardio 4-5 times a week. I saw a chiropractor. I saw an acupuncturist. I really just did everything that I thought was within my power to do. I worked on food. I saw a dietician to help me make healthier food choices and I found Spinning Babies, for example, and did forward leaning inversions for 45 seconds every day. And then just really worked on all of those different pain management techniques with my doula.

I really felt that I had done as much as I possibly could within my power to prepare for this labor regardless of what the outcome was. So for me, in those final weeks, the biggest thing for me was that mental game, just accepting that whatever was meant to be will be, that it’s going to be okay either way, just trying to relax and work on that mental component, and not stressing.

I guess in my final week leading up to the delivery, I really was relaxed. I pampered myself. I stopped working out. I really just wanted to breathe and make sure I was having a very positive experience. I also never had a single sweep the entire pregnancy nor did I have a check. My midwife was completely fine with that. She was like, “Literally, your cervix isn’t going to tell me anything until you are in labor. I’m totally on board with you.”

Meagan: I love that personally because it really doesn’t. It doesn’t tell us anything. Even in early labor, when we’re in early labor, it’s not telling us much besides the fact that we’re in early labor, right?

Sarah-Ann: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I really didn’t actually have my first check until I was in the hospital with her because our midwives here have hospital access. I’m not sure if it’s like that everywhere.

I went into labor with my third baby on Canadian Thanksgiving, Sunday morning. It was such a beautiful experience. I woke up. I was calm. My husband was calm. We just relaxed the whole day. At about 8:00-9:00 at night was when things really started to hit me hard and fast. This was again, a very new experience to me because as I mentioned in my first two labors, it was that stop-start. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. There was no rhyme or reason to the labor pattern, but once I hit a more active stage, it was like, “Wow. This is super, super intense.”

They were coming at me very consistently. I think I threw up a couple of times, but my doula assured me that it was totally normal. She seemed totally okay with it even though I was like, “Oh my gosh. I can’t believe that I’m throwing up in front of her.”

Meagan: Listen. Burps, toots, and pukes. Burps, toots, and pukes. Those things are good signs. That’s what I always tell my clients. When they’re like, “I’m so sorry I’m burping.” I’m like, “This is a good thing. Baby is moving down. Air is moving.”

Sarah-Ann: Yep, exactly. A new experience for me, but like I said, she was totally cool with it. But the intensity did overwhelm me. Contrary to what some others feel, I actually felt a lot safer being in the hospital. I never really felt like it was an unsafe space for me. Because our midwives have hospital access, we just get our room, and then, for the most part, we’re supposed to be left alone.

Now, because I was going for a VBAC after two Cesareans, there were some doctors at the hospital who were a little uptight about what was happening. I remember my midwife saying to me that she got cornered in the hallway being like, “Why are you doing this?” But she was like, “Listen. We’re doing this.”

During my first check after I got into the hospital, my midwife was like, “You know what? Let’s just do a check so we have a baseline.” So this was my first time. My doula was like, “Whatever it is, don’t worry. It’s just a baseline.” I was 2 centimeters and I will have to admit that I was very surprised that I was only 2 centimeters after the intensity of what I was experiencing because again, it was so new to me. But again, it really didn’t mean anything at that point.

I labored on the toilet and in the shower. I did some hypnosis and I had a bit of help from some morphine. At one point, one of the doctors came in. He was quite rude. He had said that he had looked up all of my last reports and one of the reports had shown that I had a T-incision for my last C-section.

Meagan: Oh really?

Sarah-Ann: Yeah. This was complete news to me and complete news to my midwife because she had obviously gone through all of my histories so I had no idea where this came from. I had never heard it in any of my past reports or follow-up appointments. It was literally the first time I had ever heard it. So he had said that it actually increases the risk by 5% or more. I don’t know the stats. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s just what he said to me. He was quite aggressive about it.

I literally looked him in the eye. I said, “Unless I or my baby are in danger, I’m not consenting to anything.” I actually didn’t see him again after that, so I think he just wanted to come in and make his point, then he left after that.

Meagan: Interesting. Have you since gone back and looked through any of your op reports to see if you do, in fact, have a special scar?

Sarah-Ann: No, I should though. The way he positioned it was that during the second C-section, there was a tear while they were doing it and I think that’s what led to the T-incision, but I’m not quite sure.

Meagan: So you had a vaginal birth after two C-sections with a special scar potentially.

Sarah-Ann: Yes, yes.

Meagan: Wow, okay. Well, that just adds a little spin to your story.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah.

Meagan: All right, keep going. I’m excited. Keep going. He leaves the room. He leaves the room.

Sarah-Ann: He leaves the room and doesn’t come back. I’m quite glad that he doesn’t come back because he brought negative energy to the room. Quite frankly, I think that he wanted to come in and assert his authority or whatever they want to do at that point. Everything was fine. Baby was doing beautifully. I was totally good. Like I was saying, I was laboring in the bathroom. I lost my mucous plug. I think it was about 9:30 in the morning at this point.

I was about 4 centimeters dilated. Contractions were still coming very consistently on their own. It was about 11:00 and I finally, I didn’t want to but I felt that at this point, I had been laboring for over 24 hours and I wanted the epidural. My doula and my husband were like, “Wait a second. Are you sure? You’ve literally spent the last 9 months telling us that you would be super upset if you get the epidural.” I was like, “No. I’ve made peace with whatever will happen. I definitely want the epidural.”

And so while I was waiting for that, my water actually broke naturally and on its own.

Meagan: Okay.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah, so things were still progressing very, very nicely. I got the epidural and I don’t know if the stars were just aligned for me at this point, but the epidural took effect just enough to take the edge off. I still had quite a bit of pain, but it was manageable and it was almost like a walking epidural. Even though my midwife was saying that there is no such thing because I had asked her about it, I could fully move. I could move my legs. I was changing positions on my own. I was on all fours at one point. I didn’t actually try to walk. I’m sure I could have if I wanted to though. But like I said, it just took the edge off, so it wasn’t a full-blast epidural.

I think that really helped me with all of the position changes.

Meagan: Right. Right. I think with the walking epidural thing, it’s that they don’t really exist meaning that you can’t really get up and walk the halls, but you can move your body. You can even have an assisted squat and things like that. I feel like they need to change it from a walking epidural to a light epidural.

Sarah-Ann: Yes. Yes, exactly.

Meagan: Or minimal. I don’t even know. Or half epidural. You know, something because people think they can get up and walk around and usually they can’t.

Sarah-Ann: No, yeah. But quite a bit of difference like I was saying.

Meagan: Oh yeah.

Sarah-Ann: Like I was saying with my second, I was so frozen. I couldn’t even move my toes to just being fully mobile.

Meagan: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah, so very, very helpful in that sense. And again, how come– I guess these are all of my questions. Why doesn’t anybody ask you, “Do you want the full blast epidural or do you want just a little bit?” Nobody talks about this and nobody asks you.

Meagan: Right. I know.

Sarah-Ann: I wish that they did. But yeah, so I think that it was around 3:00 in the afternoon. I was around 6 centimeters. The head was coming down nicely. Baby was managing well. We were rotating positions every 30 minutes. I was using the peanut ball. About two and a half hours later, I was 7 centimeters. There was another midwife that came in to relieve my current midwife but they all were within the same practice, so they were very, very supportive.

At this point, because I had been in labor for quite some time, I actually started to get a little bit of a fever. It’s funny. This doctor came in to prescribe the antibiotics that were recommended by my midwives, they were preparing me. They were like, “Okay. He’s going to come in. He has a history of telling women who are trying for VBACs that their babies are going to die and that they’re going to die. So whatever he tells you, just ignore him and tell him that you want the antibiotics.”

I was like, “Okay. I’m ready for whatever he tells me.” He comes in. He’s like, “Yeah, let’s just do some antibiotics. Sounds good,” and just walks out. The midwives look at each other in disbelief like, “I can’t believe this just happened.” They were like, “This doctor does not do this.” They were like, “Who is this guy?” So that did help me a bit out with the fever, but again, we were starting to get around the 7:00 timeframe. Baby’s heart rate baseline is now 155, but contractions are every two minutes. Now I’m about an 8, stretched to a 9 as far as progress goes. Baby was actually starting to move down nicely.

I think it was at this point where I was like, “Oh my gosh. Is this really going to happen? I think this is going to happen.” I was in disbelief because it’s kind of like one of those moments that you have dreamt about for so long and it’s starting to come to fruition. You’re like, “Wow. This is going to happen for me.” The midwife did the check and I was almost fully dilated. There was a little bit of a lip present. She was like, “I think you’re going to do it.” I had goosebumps at that moment. I was like, “Oh my gosh. My midwife thinks that I’m going to do it.” So that was a pretty impactful thing for her to say to me.

I think right before I started pushing, one other thing that happened was that I said to her, I’m like, “Do I have an Android pelvis?” Again, that fear came back into my mind coming back from that second birth that I had where he said that I have a small pelvis and that I would never do it with a baby that is bigger than 7 pounds. She shook her head so aggressively. She was like, “Your pelvis is fine. You are going to birth this baby no problem.”

After that, it was go-time. I started pushing. I pushed for about an hour. Baby was born via forceps, but it was only because she had that elevated heart rate.

Meagan: It was more of a time thing.

Sarah-Ann: It was more of a time thing, yeah. My midwife was like, “I literally had no doubt in my mind that she would have come naturally on her own,” but we thought it was best to get her out at that point. So yeah, and then they put her on my chest and she was a surprise baby. She was a girl. There were lots of tears. Everybody was cheering because I had this big birth team that had been working with me for so long. Even my midwife, I was her first VBAC after two Cesareans. It was a very, very, very special moment.

Meagan: That’s amazing.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah.

Meagan: Congratulations.

Sarah-Ann: Thank you.

Meagan: So happy for you. I love it when she was like, “Your pelvis is fine.”

Sarah-Ann: She was like, “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Meagan: Oh man, that should be one of our next shirts. We sometimes will make– well, Julie would totally do it. She would make bonfire shirts based on quotes said in the podcast. “Your pelvis is fine.”

Sarah-Ann: Yeah, exactly.

Meagan: Oh my goodness. Well, huge congrats. That’s so amazing, so amazing. And look at that, your pelvis was fine and your body could do it.

Sarah-Ann: I should note that she was 8 pounds. She was over the 7-pound mark.

Meagan: Bigger, yep. Because 7,15 was your first?

Sarah-Ann: Yep:

Meagan: And then what was your second again?

Sarah-Ann: 9,5. 9,5.

Meagan: 9,5.

Sarah-Ann: Yep.

Meagan: But it was OP.

Sarah-Ann: Yep. Yeah.

Meagan: Oh, that’s so amazing. That’s so amazing.

Well, yeah. I’d love to talk about-- so we hate this word. We hate the word “failure”. It’s really poor. When we say it, we’re referring to it in the way that medical professionals use it as a “failure to progress”. Now, my little tidbit on this. If you see “failure”, try your hardest to know that you are not a failure if you don’t give birth vaginally. You’re not a failure if you decide to get an epidural. There is no failing in birth. You are birthing a human being. That is pretty stinking incredible. It doesn’t really matter how you do it. It’s remarkable. It’s amazing. It’s so many words. You guys are amazing. You are full of strength.

Do we talk about a failure to progress or is it a failure to wait? We believe that a lot of times, it’s a failure to wait. There’s an ACOG study that shows that before, they would deem “failure to progress” more at that 4-centimeter stage, which is kind of where you mentioned with your births where you got to 4 centimeters, they broke your water which, I will touch on the way he said that then they would wait for 4 hours and it’s done.

Now, active labor isn’t really accurately considered super active until 6 centimeters. So even at 4 centimeters, we shouldn’t be deemed or given the term failure to progress. I was also given the term “failure to progress” and I was at 3 centimeters.

Sarah-Ann: Yeah.

Meagan: Yeah, and there’s no cervical change meaning no effacement, no station change, nothing happening, and that’s within a long time. So we have a blog about “Is it Failure to Progress or Failure to Wait?” and the things that may lead to failure to progress. One of them is breaking water prematurely. For my doula clients, they will always say, “Should I break my water?” That’s a hard question because sometimes breaking your water can totally do the trick and get your baby here pretty quickly and smoothly and it’s beautiful. Sometimes, it doesn’t. It brings baby down. Baby’s in a poor position. They start having heart rate issues and it’s just a downward spiral from there.

But breaking your water prematurely and the way your provider did it was like, “Hey, I’m here. We’re going to get things going and I’m going to break your water.” I wanted to note to all of our listeners that a lot of providers do that. I don’t think it’s because they necessarily have any ill intent to say, “I’m doing this. You have no choice.” But the way they say it sometimes makes people feel like they have no choice. A lot of the time we go along with it kind of like you did. My water had already broken, but now I was just like, “Okay, they are telling me what they are going to do and they are just doing it.” I didn’t really play a part in my birth in that way.

Know it’s okay to say, “Hold on. I’m not ready to break my water yet. Let’s talk about it. Let’s look at the factors.” I always tell my clients that with breaking your water, if it doesn’t happen spontaneously or naturally and they are wanting to do it artificially, it’s kind of a wildcard. We have to look at a lot of things like how high is baby? What is my baby’s position? Do we know? How is my labor pattern? Is it strong and effective or is it early on and is that why we are breaking my water is to get things to try and go? There are so many little factors so definitely check out the blog. We will make sure it’s in the show notes and then we will also include in the show notes the video that Sarah-Ann talked about that Julie did about the fear release because it’s amazing.

And then, yeah. Anything else that you would like to say about misconceptions and the whole shebang?

Sarah-Ann: I think the best recommendation I could give is just to really, truly believe in yourself and just surround yourself with people who believe in you because that makes such a huge difference. I hear so many and read so many stories on The VBAC Link Community of people who don’t have their group who are supportive and that’s probably why they are at the Facebook group for that support, but it makes such a huge difference. I was very, very assertive with people in my circle saying, “If you have any sort of negative thoughts or opinions, I don’t want to hear them. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you will not see me until after I have this baby if that is the case.”

Meagan: Mhmm, mhmm.

Sarah-Ann: So having that group is really, really important.

Meagan: It really is. We did that. I can’t remember what they call it, a mother’s blessing, but we did a little circle thing and we all did this yarn thing. It was really cool and we connected. So each time, we would wrap a piece of yarn around our circle. It was based on a positive affirmation and that piece of yarn was a strong affirmation. It stuck with me and I wore it all through labor and my birth. I just think it’s so important to have those people who weren’t all with me physically, but every time I looked down, I remembered my circle. I remembered their words. It touched me, made me stronger, and it encouraged me to keep going.

So get your circle and hold onto them tight. Don’t be scared to tell people that you love them and you are grateful for them, but they are not invited into your circle. It’s okay to not have people in your circle. My mom wasn’t initially one of the people in my circle. She wasn’t super supportive. She didn’t really understand why I wanted to have a vaginal birth. She thought it was scary. She didn’t know some of the risks. All of these things. She told me that I was crazy. Lots of things, right? It was really hard for me not to have my mom in my circle, but at the same time, that’s what I needed at the time to keep my circle positive. So yeah. I would definitely, definitely agree with that.

Okay. Well, thank you so much again for being with us today.

Sarah-Ann: Thank you. Yeah. I so appreciate it. I so enjoyed it, so thank you so much for the opportunity.

Meagan: Absolutely.

Closing

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