Episode 219 Ashley's VBA2C + Special Scar + High BMI

The VBAC Link

Ashley joins us today from Australia sharing her three birth stories and how she learned to truly trust herself. Driven out of the hospital due to discrimination and not being able to find support from home birth midwives, Ashley decided to go for a free birth. With a special scar, two previous Cesarean surgeries, a big baby, a high BMI, and a history of gestational diabetes, Ashley accepted all of the risks and was able to reap the beautiful benefits of undisturbed home delivery.

Ashley shares with us her journey to acceptance when things didn’t go the way she planned, but also how to persevere through to fight for the story she wanted. She now hosts The VBAC Homebirth Stories podcast and is a Homebirth/Freebirth Mindset Coach inspiring other women to have the courage to take back control of their birth stories!

Additional Links

Ashley’s Instagram

The VBAC Homebirth Stories podcast

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details

Full Transcript

Meagan: Hello, hello. Welcome to The VBAC Link. This is Meagan Heaton and we have Ashley here with you. Can I just tell you? She is amazing and you’re going to want to listen to this episode 5 million times and then when you’re done listening to it 5 million times, you’re going to want to check out her Instagram and watch her videos 5 million more times because she is amazing and such a wealth of knowledge. We reached out and said, “Hey, we want to share your story on the podcast. We think it’s going to be an amazing episode.” I don’t think. I know it’s going to be an amazing episode.

Review of the Week

Before we do that, I’m going to get a review per usual and remind you that if you would like to leave a review, we are on Google and Apple Podcasts. You can email us. Shoot us a message on Instagram. We love to add your reviews to the queue and read them on the podcast.

This specific review is from Ana Neves and it says, “I’ve been preparing for my VBAC ever since my C-section, and listening to the stories in this podcast has not only taught and informed me all about the different options, but also inspired me. I know that when the time comes, I will be prepared and feel the power of the great and courageous people who shared their stories here.”

Oh, I love that. “The great and courageous people.” Oh, I love that. I love that so much. Thank you so much for sharing your review and like I said, if you have a review to share and you want us to know how you feel about the podcast and all of these great and courageous people, please leave us a review.

Ashley’s Stories

Meagan: Okay, Ashley. I am so excited that you are here. It’s been interesting from now in recording, we’ve had Australian people on the podcast a lot. It warms my heart and makes me so happy and makes me feel like I probably need to go to Australia now because one, I am obsessed with all of the knowledge you guys have on birth and I actually really like the way that birth is in Australia in a lot of ways. But I am just so honored to have you here with us.

Ashley: Thank you. I am so excited to be here. That was such a beautiful, warm welcome so thank you very much for having me.

Meagan: Yes, oh my gosh. I’m serious. I just love listening to you too. I just love your guys’ accents. My Utah accent is pretty lame, but yeah. So let’s turn the time over to you. I am so excited because I feel like I’ve heard little things, but I’m excited to just hear it right now with you. Go ahead.

Ashley: Okay. So let’s start from the first babe then. Basically, I went into that one expecting that I was going to have a vaginal birth because my mum had vaginal births, and all of the women before me did too. My mum had me in 7 hours. I was the first baby. My sister is two, so mum said, “If you have medication, you’re weak. You’ve just got to suck it up.” So I had this, “If she could do it, I can do it.” I had this, “I’ll have the epidural if I need it” sort of vibe. A lot of my friends had babies before me. They had children when they were 17-18. By the time I had mine, I was 28. I was newly married and I had watched all of my friends. They told me all of their birth stories and things. They had all had vaginal births.

I thought that Cesarean birth was really for celebrities basically because when I was in high school, it was Posh Spice who was having this C-section and things like that. It was a trendy thing to do. It wasn’t something that normal people did. It was an expensive thing that rich people did.

Meagan: Like in Brazil. That’s how it’s viewed in Brazil. You are high-class if you have Cesareans.

Ashley: Yeah. I mean, I went to the GP before I got pregnant and checked on my levels to make sure. I have always had a high BMI, so the doctor said to me, “The only thing I recommend is that you lose some weight because you might struggle to conceive,” so I went in knowing that there may be a hardship there.

Some of the women in my workplace at the time had multiple miscarriages. My mother-in-law had 7 before my husband, so I went in with that kind of, “We’ll see what happens, but it could take a while.” So I conceived within the first month of trying so that was a shock, but also so exciting. Super exciting. It was a month before my wedding, so I got sick just after my wedding for my honeymoon and all of the fun games and after that, I was just like a sloth dying because I got HG. I got HG and it was just 20 weeks of basically a challenge.

Meagan: Yeah, miserable.

Ashley: It was hard. I was so excited to be a mom. I couldn’t wait from the time I conceived to birth the baby and have the baby in my arms. That’s all I wanted. I went to the hospital and there was a bit of a mix-up between when I went to the GP and had the GTT, the test for gestational diabetes. The doctor told me that I didn’t have it. I went to a hospital because that’s what they do. You go to a GP and they just send you to the local public hospital and that’s the one that you are allowed to go to, but they didn’t really discuss any of the other avenues like private, or midwives, or homebirths or anything like that.

So I went excitedly to my first appointment. I waited for over an hour and I saw some random gyno-obstetrician and they said to me, “You’ve got gestational diabetes so you’ll be seeing us.” I was like, “No I don’t. I don’t have gestational diabetes.” “Yes you do,” she said and I burst out crying. It was this big thing. Basically, the difference was if I had birthed or if I had gone to the hospital in Brisbane which is the next suburb over, I wouldn’t have had gestational diabetes but in the hospital that I went to, they were up with the times with the lower numbers because that was cycling at the moment. It was 2014.

I had gestational diabetes and that meant that I had so many more appointments. It meant that I was only with obstetricians. It meant that I had to go to nutrition or a dietician. It was just so many appointments. It was out of control. From a very early stage, I was told, “You’re going to be induced and you’re going to be on insulin.” As soon as I was diagnosed, I was told, “You’re going to be on medication.”

Meagan: No talking about it.

Ashley: “Yeah, let’s see how this unravels and we’re not going to start you on the pill, we’re just going to go straight to insulin for you,” so it was kind of like they had already decided my fate. I was really excited to have an induction. It meant that I got a date for my baby and I was going to have my baby early. When I spoke to the other ladies in the GD who were getting induced, the lady said to me, “It’s all good. I was induced and I had my baby in 5 hours.” I was like, “Awesome. Awesome.” I don’t know what number baby that was for her because when it comes to induction, I know now that it really matters whether it’s your second or if you’ve had a vaginal birth before, then an induction probably isn’t going to land you with a C-section.

I ended up getting my date, coming into hospital, and having no discussion. I kept asking, “Can we have a birth discussion?” It was always, “Next week. Next week. Next week.” There was no discussion about what happens at birth or really what to expect or any niceties or anything. It always felt quite cold. It was like the people didn’t even want to be there, the junior obstetricians, it was like they were doing their time so to speak. It just wasn’t a pleasant experience. I was expecting my first baby and I just felt like another number.

Meagan: Yeah. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy at all. That’s for sure.

Ashley: No. I just felt like it didn’t feel right. It just felt really not nice.

Meagan: Yeah, impersonal.

Ashley: Yeah, exactly. I basically went in for my induction and my husband came in with me. That was a couple of days of having gels and people putting their fingers up and continued monitoring and just very uncomfortable. I found after they had done all of that process that my cervix was right shut up. It wouldn’t open up. They said, “Okay. We are going to try and put the balloon in there.” That was the most excruciating pain.

Meagan: Especially when you’re not dilated.

Ashley: It was excruciating and I was in so much pain. The doctor and midwife made out that I was making a big fuss because I was responding that it was painful, so they gave me a lot of gas and I was pretty much tripping out. It was really trippy.

Meagan: Like nitrous oxide?

Ashley: Yeah. I just felt like if this is how painful it is to put this thing in, how painful is labor going to be? How am I going to handle that if I’ve just been through two days of this? I think that I had a cannula in my hand as well because I couldn’t really go to the bathroom without assistance from my husband. It was really getting uncomfortable. I had something up inside me.

Meagan: Or poking you or something all of the time.

Ashley: Yeah, exactly. So another night in the hospital we slept and then they said, “If it doesn’t open and it doesn’t drop out by the morning, then we’ll talk about it.” I wasn’t allowed to eat. I had to fast.

Meagan: That’s going to serve your body well.

Ashley: I know. It’s really cool. It’s like they give you so much amazing care in the hospital to set you up for this amazing birth, and I woke up and it was still in there and nothing had changed. I felt really defeated and I felt like my body was broken like there was something wrong with me. Nobody had ever discussed or told me that there is a high failure rate to this or that this procedure can fail or that you may not be a great candidate for this procedure.

Meagan: Or more time. More time can make you a different candidate statistically and raise your BISHOP score.

Ashley: Yeah, they obviously did the BISHOP score and they would have seen that I wasn’t a good candidate for this. They would have known that when they did all of these things to me. Now I see that as my body is so amazing that you tried to do all of this stuff to my body and my body was like, “Hell no.”

Meagan: Nope. I’m keeping this baby in.

Ashley: Clam shut, yeah. The junior doctor came in and she said, “Look. We recommend that you come in tomorrow for more monitoring. Go home and come back on Monday and we’ll start the process again.” I was like, “What do you mean you’re going to start the process again? This was really torturous.” I said, “What’s the difference between a day or two? My body’s not going to respond any differently. Can I just come back in two weeks?” I’m 38 weeks at this point and I’m like, “I’m not even 40 weeks. Can I come back in 2 weeks when I’m in labor?”

Meagan: And a first-time mom.

Ashley: Yeah, because my mom had me and my sisters right on 40 weeks, so I’m just expecting the same. She said, “No. You can’t.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” She said, “No, you can’t do that.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “You know what? We’re just about to have an obstetrician meeting, so I’ll go in there and I’ll ask the consultants what they think and I’ll come back with a plan.” “Okay,” I said because she also did talk about my option of being a Cesarean on the Monday and I said to her, “Look. I’m going to be honest with you. There’s no way in hell that you’re going to get me to come in for elective surgery. It’s just not going to happen. I never wanted to birth like that and I don’t want to.”

She came back and she said– they obviously spoke about what I had said and they made for me later a plan to push me in the way they thought that I was going to bend the most, so they said, “Look. We’ve bumped all of the surgeries for the day and we’re going to book you in as priority because we feel like you should be having this baby now.” I was kind of like, “Okay.” So they were bumping all of these surgeries. There were people sitting out in the waiting room waiting to have their babies, but they were going to bump me to have my baby first. I had my sister in the room who was a surgery nurse who had been pushing me to have surgery the whole time because she was traumatized. I’d been fighting her the way through like, “No. I don’t want to do that. I want to have a vaginal birth.”

I was so exhausted and my husband only had 5 days off of work, so he had to return in a couple of days. I had my in-laws at my house babysitting my dog and I was promised a baby. I feel like at that point, I was just like, “Okay, well if that’s what you think, then okay. I’ll do it.” I signed this 3-page waiver form by the way, which I was really scared of. I was like–

Meagan: What am I doing? What am I signing?

Ashley: My sister is getting me prepared. She just finished a shift from working upstairs in nursing and she organized for herself to get in there, so it was going to be my husband and her. They never allowed a third person, but because she worked there and knew people, she was able to weasel in. She’s getting me ready like a good nurse. She’s so excited. She gets to be a part of it and I’m just recording a video of, “If I die, tell my baby I love my baby.” I am so petrified. I’ve got video and photos and I just look at the photo and it’s like me trying to look excited, but actually, I’m like, “Holy crap. This is really scary and I don’t want to do this.”

Meagan: Why is everybody so excited and I’m terrified? And why is no one talking to me about this?

Ashley: Because I’m giving up control. They’re not getting the knife, but I am. It’s really scary if you’ve never had surgery. It’s not something that we do every day and it’s not something that I had ever gone through before. So off I go into surgery and it’s really good that my sister was there because she got to take a lot of photos and she got to be a part of it.

Meagan: That would bring some comfort maybe.

Ashley: Yeah, I felt like they would step up a bit as well because they knew that it was one of their own in there and I was one of their own. She took a lot of photos and things like that, but when they were doing the spinal, no one can be in the room. I just remember feeling so petrified and shaking and looking into this big man’s eyes who was holding me and thinking, “You look like a nice man. Keep me safe.”

This midwife came around and she was like, “You look like a deer in headlights” because it was like all of these lights shining down at me. I’m in this crazy room with surgery stuff. I’m really scared. I’m petrified, but I went through the whole process and the obstetrician and everyone, it was Christmastime. It was early Christmas. It was December 5th and they were all having their Christmas party that night, so they were all very happy talking about the Christmas party. “You’re going to the Christmas party? I’m going to the Christmas party.” I thought, “Well, they’re not fast. They’re not stressed. They’re very happy. They’re starting their day. I’m the first one. They’re excited about the Christmas party.” It didn’t feel very personal. I definitely didn’t feel included in the process. They were just talking among colleagues.

Meagan: I can so relate. So relate.

Ashley: It’s horrible.

Meagan: Yeah. They were talking about the snow outside and how depressing it was because the one just gotten back from Hawaii. He was like, “Oh, I came back to snow.” I was like, “I’m right here. Can we talk about my baby? Can we talk about me?”

Ashley: Yeah, it’s very impersonal. I mean, it’s one thing at the dentist to be chatting it up. I don’t mind it at the dentist if they’re chatting or something, or the orthodontist or something, but yes. I thought, “At least they’re calm.” The baby was born in no time and then announced, “It’s a baby girl.” I just thought, “Oh, can I go to sleep now? I’m not really interested in this. I’m very time. I’m shaking. This is not a great experience.” I just turned around and said, “Can I go to sleep? I don’t want to hold the baby.” It’s uncomfortable anyways, but I can’t really hold the baby. I’m shaking. I’ve never really had that many drugs in my system before and off to recovery we go basically. That’s a new experience as well.

Yeah, it wasn’t a great postpartum experience in the hospital. It was quite a negative experience with the night midwives, so I was really excited to get out. I left a day early because I just did not want to have to put up with the night staff. My husband wasn’t allowed to stay.

Meagan: Oh, why?

Ashley: So in our hospital in the public system, some of them have got 4 or 5 to a room, so I was in a 4 or 5 to a room. They don’t allow husbands to stay. I couldn’t get out of bed.

Meagan: I didn’t know that. That’s like old school.

Ashley: It is old school. A lot of them are getting upgraded now because obviously, it’s better to have your own room and stuff, but that’s where I was lumped. No one wants to birth there because no one wants to share a room, but if you’re in the catchment, that’s where you get stuck unless you go private.

So he got booted out at 10:00 at night, and then I was left with this witch of a midwife who every time my baby cried, she was like, “Oh, look. You’re just going to have to sleep with the baby on your belly because I can’t be coming back here to get the baby all of the time.” I was like, “But it’s not guidelines. I’m not allowed to sleep with my baby with my chest. I can’t sleep and it’s stressing me out.” In my head, I’m saying those things, but yeah. It was horrific.

The next morning, my husband came and I was letting loose at him. I was like, “Why weren’t you here? The baby and I haven’t slept.” I was so stressed. I mean, think about it. Being awake for 3 days, having been in the hospital for a long time, and then having gone and had major surgery, you’re left on your own with this baby with barely any support. No one telling you what to do, trying to breastfeed with your nipples getting ripped by the way.

Meagan: Pretty much abandoning you. Pretty much.

Ashley: Basically. So the second night, I stayed and sorted that out, then I went home the next day. I did have a bit of a thing with the midwife. She was on again, so I ran down to the bathing room and I hid from her because– okay. One thing you should know about me is that I am a highly sensitive person, so something that someone might say to someone may not affect them as much as it would affect me.

Meagan: It triggers you.

Ashley: It really upsets me and being in a vulnerable position, I need someone who’s gentle, nurturing, and loving. So I ran away and I hid in the bathing room with my baby. I was trying to work out why she was crying. I had fed her. I swaddled her. I changed her. I was really trying to work it out. She could hear the baby screaming and obviously thought that I was not looking after my baby. I said, “Look, I’m just trying to figure out what’s happening here.” She’s like, “You just need to hold her.” I was like, “No, I just need to figure out what’s happening because I’ve got to go home with this baby and work this out.” She’s like, “Why don’t I take the baby and I’ll look after the baby so you can get some sleep?”

I’m like, “No. That’s not happening.” I was so against this woman. She was like, “Here’s your medication. Take your medication. I’ve been looking for you,” and then she sent another colleague down to come and check on me and try to convince me to give the baby up. But what I discovered by sticking to my guns and doing what I felt was intuitively right for me was that my baby was pulling her arms out of the swaddle and that was waking her up.

So I put her in a little zip-up and from then on, she slept through the night. My husband came the next morning right on the dot. I had a shower. Baby was sleeping. He’s like, “Where’s the baby?” I’m like, “She’s sleeping,” feeling like a million dollars. “I’ve got this. I’ve got this and we’re checking out today.”

Meagan: Yep. Get me out of here.

Ashley: I went home and we struggled with breastfeeding. I got some really bad advice from one of the nurses that came to my house so I felt like a double failure. By 6 months time, I was mixed feeding to just formula feeding and I felt like a real failure. I let her down. I hadn’t birthed her the way– I didn’t feel like I birthed with, “When I had my baby,” or “When my baby was born.” I didn’t say “When I birthed,” because I didn’t feel a part of the experience.

It happened to me. It wasn’t inclusive to me. I just felt completely excluded. So I knew when I was going to have my second, I was having a VBAC for sure because I knew there was a thing possible. I knew about VBACs and I said to my GP, “What’s the timeframe between babies?” She said, “24 months between birth and birth.” That was the thing then or whatever.

I said, “Fine. I’m having 24 months.” I literally started trying within 24 months, whatever it was, 15, or whatever. I fell pregnant the second time. I was having a VBAC and I think I joined the VBAC group in Australia. I started learning all of the stuff, becoming informed and advocating. I knew that this time I wasn’t having an induction because that’s what caused me a C-section. I knew that I wanted to try to avoid GDM because that’s what I thought was the lead-up for the induction rush.

I didn’t realize that my weight was obviously pushing against me so much. I didn’t understand the reasons why or some of the discrimination that happened in the hospital at that point. I did the early GTT test and I passed that. I was like, “Yes. Maybe this is going to be different.” I’m going to show them. I’m educated. I know what I want. I’m informed. I’m also a people pleaser so I’m trying to get them on board with me. I’m trying to get them to agree with my decision. I’m trying to get them to be a part of my team and cheer me on and get excited.

I’m just kind of getting met with obstetricians who were like, “VBAC is great and it’s the best way to birth your baby.” I’m like, “Yes. This is amazing.”

Meagan: You’re like, “Thank you. This is what I want to hear.”

Ashley: “But not for you.” I’m like, “What? Not for me?” “Well, for you, we recommend a planned Cesarean.” “Okay.” They never really spoke in plain language or explained it to me. It was only through digging and digging and digging and asking and asking and asking that I was finally able to get some answers. I essentially ended up getting gestational diabetes at 20 weeks, so then I wasn’t allowed to see midwives because I had asked to see midwives and they said, “If you get GD, we won’t release you.”

Meagan: It disqualified you.

Ashley: It disqualified me from seeing midwives. I said, “Look, you’re a surgeon. Can I just see you if I need surgery?” The thing with GD is that there is a GD counselor and somebody that you report to outside of them, so why do I need to see you because you’re not a GD expert or specialist? I actually see somebody. Why is a midwife not capable of looking after me? It doesn’t make any sense. They’re just trying to pull in all of the patients to keep their bellies full and make sure they’ve got jobs. I was gutted. I was absolutely gutted.

I only failed by .1 on one of the tests and I wish I had known back then that I could have redone it and I probably would have passed it. It was really disappointing and I was like, “Oh, goodness me.” So I was diet-controlled through that time. I say diet-controlled because that’s the readings that I gave them. I wasn’t really diet-controlled but I was being a bit of a rebel because I was getting the same numbers as I was with my first baby and I was on insulin with her and insulin didn’t do much. I thought, “Well, what’s the difference going to be if they’re the same numbers? She came out healthy and had no sugar problems or anything.” I kind of started to think, “Is this GD thing a bit overrated? If I was in a different hospital or a different country—”

Meagan: I was going to say if you went somewhere else like last time, would it have been different or would it actually have been GD as well?

Ashley: If I had gone somewhere different and I knew this because I was part of the GD community and I had friends that were birthing in Brisbane who were even having to keep below higher numbers than me. They had much higher numbers than me, so I thought, “You’re with a private obstetrician and you’re getting different information than me,” so I started to clue on that. And then also, when I was doing my readings on my fingers, I would get a different reading on this one to this one, so I started questioning, “If this one’s .5 difference to this one, how accurate is this measuring?”

Meagan: Yeah, interesting. Very interesting.

Ashley: So it was very scary for me to do that because nobody’s doing that and every time you’re going there, they’re like, “Dead baby. There was a woman who had gestational diabetes and her baby died.” And I was like–

Meagan: You hear these and you’re like, “What?”

Ashley: I was like, “How did she die? How did the baby die?” They said, “Oh, we can’t disclose that information. You’re telling a room full of women with gestational diabetes that a baby died and the mum had gestational diabetes. She could have been hit by a car for all we know and you’re using it to fearmonger us, but you’re not willing to tell us how the baby died. It could have been negligence on the hospital’s part. It may not have been GD related at all.”

Meagan: Yeah, she just had it.

Ashley: She just had it, so I found that quite disgusting and all of those things started to really add up. The more that I saw in the VBAC community, the more that I saw this was happening around Australia, the more I was determined to advocate and fight which is really hard for a highly sensitive person, but I got a student-midwife. I got the head midwife to come to my appointments. I had a student-doula who was a dear friend of mine and I started to grow a team around me.

I refused to see one of the doctors at one point and wanted to speak to the best, most amazing doctor in the hospital, so the midwives set me up with the nicest obstetrician who still didn’t support me to have a vaginal birth, but he was nicer to deal with. I mean, I had some crazy conversations with some of the obstetricians during that time. One of them was a junior and she said to me because I didn’t want to have continuous monitoring. I just wanted to have the doppler. She said, “You know what my boss says? He says that if you don’t have continuous monitoring, then you’re basically free birthing in the hospital.” I looked at her and I was like, “You’re crazy.” At this point, free birth to me was crazy and she was telling me that because I’m in a hospital and if I’m not doing that, then I’m free birthing.

And I thought, “But I’m getting checked with a doppler by a midwife. I’m with obstetricians.” That is absolutely insane, but it goes to show the kind of mentality and the thought process that goes through the fact that they don’t know how to be with women. They don’t know how to observe and watch a woman. Now, my mindset is the complete opposite way. I see things in a different light than how they would see. They rely on machines whereas they don’t rely on that connection. I’m the type of person that relies on human-to-human connection and I’ve listened to people and I love stories. That’s how we learn. We don’t learn about humans by watching machines.

I started to learn about the inaccuracies of their machines and some of the equipment that they were using. It made no sense to me to have continuous monitoring when I knew that one obstetrician would send me to surgery for the reading whereas another one with maybe more experience who may be older and more chilled would be like, “Yeah, that’s nothing.” If the results are at that rate, then that’s not beneficial to me because then I’m putting my fate on whether I get a choppy-choppy obstetrician or a chilled, relaxed one on the day.

So that was kind of my thinking. I didn’t do growth scans this time. I didn’t see the point in me having a growth scan to tell me that I was having a big baby. My first was 3.7 at 39 weeks. I knew this one was going to be 4 kilos and I said, “Look, I’m happy to birth a 4.5-kilo baby out of my vagina,” which is almost 10 pounds for your listeners and they just wanted to do Cesareans on 4-kilo babies as well as inductions. It was always about induction and I found out the reason why they wanted to do induction. They wanted to manage me.

They weren’t a tertiary hospital, one of the bigger ones, and so I found out that the junior obstetricians wouldn’t be comfortable doing or maybe confident or capable of doing an emergency Cesarean on someone of my size, so I said, “That’s fine. Just send me to that hospital or that hospital. Let’s just do this. If it’s a staffing issue, I don’t want to stretch it out.” They just laughed at me. It can’t be a big deal then, can it? If they’re not willing to send me to a different hospital.

We had so many conversations and it was anxiety-inducing. I would cry on the way to the hospital. I would cry on the way home. I’d have to get my fight on and I even had a conversation with an obstetrician that said to me, “We’ll fight about that later.” I said, “That’s exactly right though isn’t it? It’s a fight, the fight.”

Meagan: Yeah, we’ll fight about that later. That right there.

Ashley: He goes, “Oh, I didn’t mean fight. I don’t mean fight.” I go, “Yeah, but no. You do.”

Meagan: But you just said that.

Ashley: But you do.

Meagan: You’re like, “Yeah, I can tell that you’re not agreeing with me and you’re telling me that if I want something else, I’m going to have to fight with you.”

Ashley: And so I’m hearing about this informed consent and I’m like, “Informed consent.” I’m fixated on what would get them to be on my side. I’ve learned about informed consent. They legally have to support me, right? But that is just the fast in my opinion, in my experience, they wouldn’t know what informed consent or working with a woman, it just blows my mind. I didn’t realize that at the time, but there were a lot of conversations that were happening about my weight. “You’re not going to be able to. It’s harder for bigger women like you.” I would leave conversations thinking, “I’m not going to be able to birth my baby out of my vagina because I’m big.”

Meagan: They were shaming you.

Ashley: Yeah, basically I was told by an obstetrician that, “She’s not a fatist, but—.” I was like, “I’ve never heard someone say ‘I’m not a fatist.’” I don’t even know what that means. I had some really interesting conversations because I was asking questions and I was asking questions because I was asking so many questions. Every time I went to an appointment, the obstetrician would say to me, “Ah, I see you’re having a repeat Cesarean,” and that would spike adrenaline. Read my book. Read my book. You would know that I’m having a VBAC and then, “Oh, well do you know the risks of VBAC?” Yes, I do. “Oh, you really do know the risks, but we still recommend that you have a repeat Cesarean,” and I would have to go through that every single time.

Meagan: So discouraging.

Ashley: It was a nightmare. By 36-37 weeks, I had received a phone call and they said, I could feel the smugness and a smile through the phone, “Oh, we’re not willing to take the risk. You’re going to have to go to a different hospital.” I was just horrified. I was so scared. I’ve just been kicked out of hospital because nothing has changed with me.”

Meagan: But because I won’t do what they want me to do and I’m being stern in following my heart.

Ashley: Yeah, because I won’t submit. I’ve told you from day one what I’m going to do, but I suppose the rate of success with that tactic is probably 99%, I’m probably the 1% of women who actually says, “No. I actually will not fall for your trickery.”

Meagan: Yeah, okay fine. I’ll leave.

Ashley: I was so determined, so then I went to a different hospital and it was a newer hospital. They had birthing pools. I was hopeful that I might get in a birthing pool. You get your own room in the postpartum. I was excited. They had informed consent signs. The receptionists weren’t fighting each other. This first one that I went to was pretty rough down there. They were lovely and polite. I thought, “Oh, this feels nice. Maybe I’m going to have a different response,” and I did. I saw an amazing midwife on entry. She was like, “If they’re not going to allow you to do this, you advocate and you can make a complaint. That’s disgusting how you were treated.”

I thought, “Oh, wow. This is the best thing.” I saw an obstetrician. They were supportive. They wanted to do some of the same things, but they respected me. I felt like I was seen as a human. They would ask me questions and they would go and ask a consultant and the consultant would agree with me. I was like, “Wow, I am ticking boxes here.” I made some compromises because I was vulnerable. I did a growth scan and they found out that baby was about 4 kilos.

Meagan: Like you already guessed.

Ashley: I knew that at 39 weeks. I said, “That’s fine.” “Oh, we recommend induction.” I said, “Yeah, I know you do. I’m not doing it.” That’s what caused me the C-section last time. I’m not doing it. We went through the study at 39 weeks. I said, “That doesn’t apply to me. It doesn’t apply to me. I’m not in that study. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

I don’t know how you can have a study saying that it’s going to work better on someone at 39-41 because you’re not doing the same people. You’re not doing induction on someone at 39 weeks and then going, “Hey, let’s try it again at 41 or whatever it is.” You’re doing different people. I don’t want to know about it. I don’t care about it. They said, “Okay, well I’ll talk to the consultant. We’ll look at the scan,” and then she came back and said, “Yep, you’re fine. There’s no fat on the shoulders, so yep. That’s fine.” But if I hadn’t said that, I would have been booked in for an induction, right? I would have just said, “Let’s go, yep.”

I sat there on the weekend with my husband shaking like a leaf again having to advocate for myself. It isn’t an easy thing to do. Every time I have to raise my voice, I’m putting adrenaline into my body. I’m not raising like screaming, but I’m having to raise my voice. My baby would have been under attack the whole pregnancy essentially. I eventually get to the due date. A week before my due date– it was a couple of days before my due date– my midwife turns to me at the last appointment. She was training in the hospital last time, so I was really grateful that she was willing to come with me and support me even though she wasn’t going to get her book signed off for this birth.

And on that appointment, she said to me, “Look, my daughter’s booked a holiday for me, so I’m going away on your due date. Are you going to have this baby soon now?” I was like, “Oh my goodness. You’ve just fought with me the whole time and now you’ve turned into them trying to get me to have my baby before my due date because it suits you.”

Yes. I was heartbroken and I was so angry. I decided then and there I was not going to invite her into my birth space even if it was sooner because she had betrayed me on every level. I went into that appointment and the obstetrician didn’t recommend it, she said, “Do you want to do a cervical stretch?” A sweep and I said, “No, I don’t.” I turned to the midwife and said, “What do you think?” She was like, “Yeah, why not?” Of course, she said that because it gets the baby out quicker.

So again, you’ve got to be careful about who you’re with because if you’re relying on people who’ve got a different agenda, you’ve got to take their advice or their opinion with a grain of salt. But I was a little bit interested myself. I’d never had a stretch or a sweep like that before. I was a bit interested. I was worried that I was going to go over due dates and I was willing to wait for 40+10 and I was getting a bit stressed like, “Oh, what if it goes longer?” You start to freak out at that point.

There’s a bit of pressure and with what I’d been through, I had the stretch and sweep. She said, “You’re 3 centimeters and you’re stretchy.” I was like, “Wow. Wow. Last time, they couldn’t even– I was closed up.”

Meagan: Get a Foley in.

Ashley: Yeah. So I was so excited. I started to get some niggles and lose some mucus and a bit of blood and things like that. Two days later, I went into labor. She said to me, “If it does nothing in the next couple of days, then the baby wasn’t ready to come. If it happens, then the baby was always going to come,” sort of thing. Now, obviously, what’s the point in doing them if the baby is going to come and it does nothing but disturb? I mean, my complete mindset changed and flipped. But yeah, I went into straight labor. I was so excited and so proud of myself. I’m in labor this time.

I never knew if my body was broken after all of the fearmongering and talk. I was just so proud of myself. It was exciting. I had adrenaline pumping through me. I was shaking with fear and excitement. I was going to wait the whole day to go in. I was going to essentially go to hospital when my baby’s head was coming out.

As soon as I went into labor, I was like, “Yeah. I think I should go to the hospital.” I was adamant the whole time I wasn’t going in until I was ready to push and as soon as I was in labor, I was like, “Yep. Okay, it’s time.”

Meagan: Let’s go. It’s exciting. You’re like, “Okay, let’s go have this baby.”

Ashley: Yeah, and it was fast and hard. When I go into labor, it’s not any prelabor, it’s just that this is on. I dilate pretty quickly. When I got to the hospital, I was 5 centimeters. They were really surprised at how I was doing because I was quite calm and quiet. They were like, “Oh.” I got eventually into the birthing suite. My doula came and set up the room really pretty. I went into the shower and had a midwife assigned to us. She just sat down and read my birth plan and was happy with everything. She wouldn’t let me in the birthing pool of course because I was over 100 kilos even though they’ve got a hoist for bigger people if they need to. They’re just not comfortable with bigger people in the birthing pool.

I just did my thing and I said, “I don’t any doctors to come in. I don’t want anyone annoying me or harassing me.” And I just labored for a few hours until I felt like there were some waters or something I could smell and feel. The midwife said, “Do you want me to check you?” I said, “Yeah. Yeah, we’ll see if the waters have gone.” She said, “Yeah, the waters have gone and yeah, this is a little fore bag so would you like me to break that?” I said, “Well, if you think so, okay.”

At this point, my education had gone to the point of getting past the induction. If I had gotten into spontaneous labor and I saw a midwife because everything was raving about midwives, I’m going to be fine. This baby’s going to come out of my vagina okay. I didn’t know anything about birth really. I just knew what not to do. I’m probably not going to have an epidural, but I’m open to it. You shouldn’t break the waters, but I don’t really understand why. But I wasn’t having my waters broken. I was just having a little bit of my waters broken.

And then came the tsunami and it was my entire waters. It was all over the bed and it was all warm. I was like, “What is happening?” She had either–

Meagan: So your bag never really did break until then.

Ashley: No, yeah. Yeah. Yes. And there’s some other information. She’s like, “Oh, we’ll put the screw on the baby’s head.

Meagan: The FSC, fetal scalp electrode?

Ashley: We call it the clip.

Meagan: A clip.

Ashley: Yeah, some call it the screw. I call it the screw. It’s a little clip and it barely hurts. That was one of my compromises from not having continuous monitoring. I said, “If I have that, then I can be mobile.” That was the compromise and negotiation. Then, I found myself locked to a machine by the way because it wasn’t mobile at this point. Then as soon as I got off the bed, there was a decel, so I was back on the bed. I was in excruciating pain at this point. I come out of my nest in the shower where I was able to breathe through everything and I was standing upright. Now there was a bit of fear happening because there was a decel that she didn’t recover from quickly enough, so then the obstetricians and everyone had to come in.

They were kind of like, “Oh, C-section,” talking about it already. I said, “No. I don’t want to talk about it. The baby’s fine. Just let me do my thing.” “Okay, okay,” and then they hounded me to get a catheter in my arm even though I didn’t want one. I said, “No, I don’t want one.” It’s really painful and I don’t want it. She said, “Oh, come on. We’ll just get one in.” I said, “Okay, fine. Just do it then. Just leave me alone.” So she put it in and I’m walking around with this thing coming out of my vagina, this thing in my hand and I’m out of the zone and really finding it hard to get back into how I was feeling.

Meagan: Your space.

Ashley: Yeah, my space.

I must have been in there for an hour or two, maybe a bit longer. By this point, they’ve told me that I’m 10 centimeters on one side, 8 centimeters on the other and there were a couple more decels and maybe one more and they were saying things to me that I don’t understand. They were like, “You’ve got an anterior lip. It’s swollen. You’re 10 centimeters on this side and 8 centimeters on that side. Your baby’s asynclitic. Your baby’s up high.” They’re looking at me and I’m like, “I don’t know.”

Meagan: You don’t know what any of that means.

Ashley: I’m 10 centimeters. The baby is going to come out right any minute. I’m just like, “Is the baby’s going to come out soon?” I was starting to feel some pushy pains as well, so my body was pushing a little bit too and then I think I went back into the shower and I called in my husband because he was a weak link and I knew he would do what I said. I was like, “I want an epidural.” And the epidural was there within 10 minutes. I knew that would happen. They wanted me to have an epidural on arrival because of my said. I went to the anesthesiologist appointment and they looked at my back and said, “No, you’ve got a fine back.” What they’re worried about with bigger people is that there can be fat over the spine. I said, “Okay, well I’ve got a fine back,” which I thought would be fine because I never had any problems with the C-section.

They said, “But we still recommend an epidural on arrival.” I was like, “Okay. Well, at least I understand why.” The thing is that I’m trying to get information from them so I can make informed choices, so if it’s in my best interest, then I will say yes and I will do it. But if it’s in the best interest of you to make your life easier, then I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to put myself or my baby at risk to make your life easier. I understood that an emergency C-section was a higher risk than a planned C-section. I understood that induction was a higher risk. I knew all of the before things and the choices. What I got stuck with is I didn’t understand physiological birth. I hadn’t done any research on that.

So they were talking to me gobbledygook, all of these things were happening. I just never thought that this could happen. I never ever thought this would happen to me. My mom had me in 7 hours. What is happening? What are these things that are happening? Now I’m on the bed. I’m stuck on the bed because I’ve chosen to have an epidural and now I’ve negotiated because we have had a couple of decels. I’ve negotiated for myself what I think is a pretty sweet deal which I realize is actually a really bad deal of vaginal examinations every hour.

The normal standard practice is about every 4 hours and I’m like, “Okay. How about if we just check every hour and see if there is any progress?” They’re like, “Yeah, that sounds great.” Every hour, they come into me and they’re saying, “No change. Baby’s up high. No change. We recommend C-section. These are the risks if you wait.” They were talking to me about the risks that would happen in a Cesarean, not about the risks that would happen in a vaginal birth if I wait. So it was very biased.

I was like, “Okay, so what happens if I wait to have a vaginal birth?” They were like, “Well, we just recommend a Cesarean.” I feel like I’m in a room stuck with the enemy. I said to my doula, “I don’t trust them. I feel like they know what they’re talking about, but I don’t know any different either.” My doula was a student doula and it’s not like I came in there with a midwife who is on my team. I’m looking at the midwife and I’m like, “Are you going to help me?” I’m realizing that she’s team obstetrician. I mean, I’ve never met her before. She was just working there. I’m thinking, “This is not what was sold to me in the VBAC group if I see a midwife. Midwives are amazing, blah blah blah blah.” What I actually missed was that independent midwives that are not working in hospital have more free reign are the midwives that everyone’s raving about.

I’m thinking it’s just random midwives, any midwives are awesome. And not every midwife’s awesome because you’ve got different personalities. You’ve got different experiences. You’ve got different passions and every person is different just like you can find an amazing obstetrician. You can find an amazing personal trainer, but they’re not going to suit everybody or everyone’s needs. And they have a bias against different people based on color, based on gender, based on size, based on the way that you look. If they can identify with you, they are going to be more attached to the story and fight and advocate a bit more. If they’re not really into you, they’re going to be like, “Oh well. I’m not going to lose my job over this,” sort of thing.

I’ve learned all of these things since. Eventually, after about 6 hours, I had another decel. I think I had about 3 in total. It wasn’t a huge amount.

Meagan: Yeah, and how low were they? Do you remember?

Ashley: I don’t remember. The problem was that she wasn’t coming back as quickly as they would have liked.

Meagan: Prolonged.

Ashley: Yeah, it was prolonged. I also didn’t know at the time that the epidural also slowed down my contractions too. I only know this from getting the hospital notes which is quite common with epidurals as well. Eventually, I just said, “Okay, fine. I’m fine. I’ll go.” After the last one, it felt like my baby was at risk. If someone is coming to you every hour saying, “This is the risk. We recommend that,” eventually, you just give up. I think I had been in labor for a total of 12 hours at that point. The first labor I had ever had and off I went. As I was going out, the midwife said to me, “It’s okay. I had a home birth planned, but I ended up in a Cesarean. You’ll be okay.” I was like, “See? You never would have been on my team because you hadn’t even had a vaginal birth yourself.” I looked at her and I was like, “That was the worst thing you could have ever said to me at that point.”

I was like, “Just because you had one and you’re okay with it doesn’t mean that I’m okay with it.” It was the worst thing. She obviously thought it was really supportive, but I felt so betrayed. So off I went and I had my surgery. Everything started to go downhill. My husband got rushed out of the surgery with my baby and you could just feel that it was intense. I said to my husband, “I love you. Look after the baby. I think I’m either going to lose my uterus or I’m going to die.”

Meagan: Were you hemorrhaging?

Ashley: Basically, the story that they tell me, I’m not sure if I believe it, but even if it is true, it is what it is at the end of the day. One of the risks that they were worried about is when a baby descends too much, there’s a– you know this yourself– there’s always a risk of a special scar happening because there’s more risk of a tear or them having to cut more. So that’s what they were informing me about the whole time. They knew about the risk and they were trying to stop–

Meagan: But they kept saying that baby was high, right?

Ashley: They told me that baby was high. They said that when the baby came out, she flung her arm up and ripped it down to my cervix.

Meagan: Oh, okay.

Ashley: Now, how does that happen when a baby is up high? If she’s up high, how is she ripping down to my cervix? Now I think about that. How does that happen? Because my cervix was fully dilated.

Meagan: Yeah, except on that one side. Did it ever finish? That swelling, that edema, did it go down?

Ashley: Not that I know of. What they told me was nothing had changed positioning in that. Then when I looked at the notes when I got the notes, he laid out, “I saw that the positioning had changed.” She had come down a station, but they never communicated that to me. I have a feeling that she was probably down a bit further than they had put because, on the paperwork, they also said I was only 7 centimeters. There was no mention of an anterior lip, so they fudged the papers a little bit and weren’t honest. I mean, if you’re going to make a few little changes, then obviously, there’s a reason for that. It obviously looks better on paper.

Meagan: That’s what happens all of the time. The patient will hear one thing, then on the op reports, it’s a little different. So we always encourage you to get your op reports. It’s sometimes hard to read but get your op reports.

Ashley: It is hard to read. You know, they put it on the board too here in Australia what you are and at what time, so the information is there for me to look at the whole time while I’m in labor, so it’s not that one person just said it, it’s literally on the board for you to see. I was quite upset when I saw some of the notes. I went through the notes. I’ve been through them multiple times now and I was just trying to learn. I was Googling, “What does this mean and what does that mean?” because I don’t know the medical jargon.

I’m learning all of the things and I’m looking at Spinning Babies. I’m looking at everything and trying to learn after the fact, but essentially what had happened was apparently, she had flung around there, tore my uterus down to the cervix and then they needed to call in a specialized team to come in and resolve that problem that they had created. The surgery went on for a number of hours and it was a very challenging surgery. I wanted to crawl out of my body essentially because I had been laying there for so long. It was just a horrible experience.

I was reunited with my baby. She was born at 6:30. I was reunited with them at about 12:00 at night, so I had been in labor from 4:00 in the morning and then I was breastfeeding her because my husband advocated for her to be breastfed. So that meant that she had her sugars checked. They were fine, so they were happy for her to wait for me. I was really, really glad that my husband advocated for me. I was so tired when I got out of surgery and I was back in this hot room. I was sweating profusely. There was no aircon. Some of the rooms, even though it was new, didn’t have aircon. I ended up in a room with no aircon and it was so hot.

I had to have a midwife stay with me and do observations every 15 minutes to check me. I didn’t end up in the ICU, but I lost 3.1 liters of blood. I had blood transfusions in the surgery, all of the stuff in the surgery to keep me awake, and all of that. I really wanted to go under, but they wouldn’t put me under because I had been eating. It wasn’t a great experience and I came out very traumatized from that experience. I ended up having PTSD with flashbacks. I was crying for months. I felt broken. They told me to never have a vaginal birth again, and that I could have two more babies so that was amazing. I was like, “Well, you must have done a good job if you think I could have two more,” but they must be born Cesarean. I was like, “Okay, no problems.” I was so grateful to be alive after that experience. I was trying to make sense of what had happened.

The next few years, that was my mission to try to make sense because I’ve gone from a space of you’re not allowed to have a vaginal birth to what happened, trying to understand what happened, and then planning our future because we wanted four children total. So I almost never had any more children. For 6-12 months, I was done. I was never going to go through that again.

I was a broken person. I was really struggling, but I trained as a postpartum doula and I started to want to help women in breastfeeding and the things that I knew that I could support because I ended up breastfeeding that baby for 12 months and I felt like a success at that regard. I learned a lot about breastfeeding. I wanted to share my voice and help women, but I wasn’t well enough to help women in the birth space because I felt like a failure. I was trying to learn and I wanted to be in a space where I felt safe.

This was trauma and challenges were happening and this was me being able to help people and make a positive out of a negative essentially.

And then I found you guys. I found your podcast and I was like, “This is amazing,” because you were the first place that was promoting VBAC after two Cesareans. Back then, nobody was having VBAC after two Cesareans let alone multiple now that we see happening. I think a lot of it has to do with your podcast because when you hear women’s stories and you hear the statistics and you can actually hear other women doing it, that was the start of me getting hope and realizing that there was another way.

Meagan: Oh, that just gave me the chills.

Ashley: Thank you so much for your podcast.

Meagan: I have a sweater on right now, but literally it just went up my arm.

Ashley: Awesome. It is really nice to know that if I didn’t come across your podcast, I probably wouldn’t have taken that next step, so it is life-changing to hear other women’s stories and have that resource. The fact that you guys had the stats and everything, I was very much in the stats trying to move through special scars. I eventually had gone onto Special Scars, Special Hope.

Meagan: Such a good group.

Ashley: Yeah, so amazing and started to connect with other women who were having worse scars than me. They were birthing on classical scars. I was like, holy moly. I think it was ACOG or maybe RANZ of New Zealand and Australia. They said it was okay to labor on a scar like mine because I had a vertical scar down to my cervix. That’s the low-risk special scar. I was like, “If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.” Look at these people saying that. All of the obstetricians that I had spoken to because I had a meeting with an obstetrician. I had met with so many midwives who knew about the system. They said to me, “Look. They are going to be petrified of you coming to the system.”

It was really good to get that feedback and from my own experience, they wouldn’t allow me to have a VBAC let alone a VBAC after two Cesareans with a special scar and high BMI. I started to really try to uncover, so I met with an obstetrician from that hospital and she basically said to me, “Look, you’re a square peg trying to fit in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole.” I looked at her. I didn’t understand that. I had never that and I have never been referred to as that kind of person. I quite like doing what normal people do.

I was looking at her. I’m like, “What are you talking about?” She just said to me, “Basically, I ended up with this surgery because the surgery who was working had decided that because of my weight, that that was all that I was capable of or that was the path that I was going through.” That was really the first time that I’ve felt like my weight has actually held me back or I’ve been discriminated against. When I look back at the fact of how I was treated and the conversations I was having, it was obvious that it was happening the whole way through, I just was so naive to it that it was happening in my face and I didn’t even realize it because the thing is that I understand that being of high weight can put you at risk for all of these things.

I’m looking at it from their point of view, but I’m not actually sometimes looking at it from Ashley’s point of view. I understand their concern and I understood all of the medical stuff because I had listened to them. I had asked questions. I had read their policies for obese people. I understood that it was discrimination. I didn’t understand it at the time. I didn’t understand that they probably weren’t seeing me as a human as maybe they would have if I was a skinny version of myself. We probably would have had a different conversation. They probably would have been cheering me on and holding my hand and saying, “You’re an amazing VBAC candidate. We support you. We probably still want to do all of these things to you, but we’re not going to kick you out of hospital.”

That’s the difference when I hear women’s stories. Oh, she’s allowed to get in the water bath and she’s allowed to have a beautiful birth. She doesn’t have to bend over backward and do a cartwheel and it’s because she looks a certain way or she was really lucky because she got an obstetrician that was amazing. There are all of these things that have to line up. That’s what has propelled me on my journey to find home birth as an option.

Meagan: Home birth, home birth. So you talked about stats. You were on this mission of stats, so you went out and you found the stats about VBAC after multiple Cesareans, two Cesareans, special scars, found some stuff, said, “Okay, this seems acceptable,” and then you started a home birth. Based off of your own research, for you, you felt completely comfortable starting this journey.

Ashley: No, I didn’t.

Meagan: Okay.

Ashley: I didn’t. I mean, I had to work through the fears with the stats and I was comfortable with home birth and the idea of home birth. I understood that home birth was as safe as birthing in a hospital and I understood that if I was birthing with a midwife I would have a medical person with me. Now, the next challenge that came for me was that I couldn’t find a home birth midwife who would support me.

I feel like I leveled up. I was leveling up the whole time. It was like, now you’ve got a VBA2C. Now you’ve got a special scar. Let’s work through this. What do I feel comfortable with? What am I willing to take on? Okay, okay. That’s doable. That’s doable. I can work through that. What’s the next thing? Oh yeah, the next thing is this. Okay, what am I going to do with that? A home birth. Okay, a home birth feels like a safe option. I can do this. I can do that. I can do that. Okay, that’s going to be the best thing for me. I’m not going to go back to hospital.

Meagan: I love that you said that. I can do this. I’m comfortable with this. You kind of have to go through that with anything. In life in general, but especially with this birth, you went through it and you were like, “Okay, yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Now, here I am.”

Ashley: Yeah and I was seeing a psychologist at the time for all of the things to help me lose weight actually. My GP, I wanted to lose weight. I’ve been overweight my whole life. I wanted to lose weight. I went to a nutritionist and she was like, “You know everything. I think it’s emotional.” I’ve got childhood stuff going on. I worked with him and I said, “The way that I feel about the hospital system, is this right?” He’s normalizing my experience for me and saying, “You’re perfectly normal.” I’m trying to say, “Am I having a trauma response here? I don’t want to go into a home birth because I’m having a trauma response,” because the obstetrician said to me, one of them, she’s like– she wasn’t the best obstetrician for the debrief. She said to me, “You’ve got a risk of special scar, a 7% rupture rate.” I said, “That’s a little bit different from what I found in Special Scars, Special Hope where they are looking at women.”

I said, “Have you got any statistics?” She’s like, “No.” I’m like, “So how can I trust that what you’re saying is correct then?”

Meagan: Well then, where’d you get 7%?

Ashley: Exactly. She’s like, “Look, if you find any doctor who’s willing to support you, then they’re not the doctor for you. I’m telling you what is the safest thing for you.” I was challenging her because at this point, I’m angry. I’m so done. I’m so done. I’ve just been through hell because of you people and I want to get information. I don’t want to hear your judgments. She said to me, “If you find a doctor, then basically they’re not right. They’re doing the wrong thing.” I said, “So you’re the best doctor in the whole world? You know everything right? You’re the best and you know the best then? So if I find another doctor who says yes then they’re wrong and you’re right, that’s what you’re saying?” She was just looking at me. She was like, “I just feel like what you’re going to do is you’re going to keep looking until you’re going to find someone and then you’re going to put yourself at risk.”

I’m like, “That is exactly what I’m going to do.”

Meagan: You’re like, “Well, I’m glad you feel that way.”

Ashley: I should have sent her a postcard after my free birth and said, “I freebirthed. Thank you for driving me to this.” It is amazing the conversations you have when you really do have conversations. You can see where they’re coming from and how very different their views are. Some of the fears and worries that they have are not about you and your baby. They are about themselves and their career, but the information I didn’t know about her was that she was actually the head of obstetrics and she just lost her title and her job. She’d been bumped down.

The reason why I went to her was because she supported breech birth in hospital and she was very vaginal friendly. She did support me. She was the consultant I saw on the paperwork that supported me to have a vaginal birth, but in the timeframe of me organizing to meet up with her, the information that I didn’t know that I found out later was that she lost her job because she had supported somebody to have a breech and there was a poor outcome that the parents accepted, but somebody else had basically complained about. The only thing is that breech is so risky they say even though it’s not. She’s one of the radical obstetricians so she had been punished and so she was coming from a space of where she was.

It’s really important to know that information. You never know where they are in their career or how they are feeling, so she might have been really bitter at the time and negative and feeling like there was doom and gloom in the world. It was really shameful when I was speaking to my doula friends and they were like, “Oh really? She was so amazing.” I’m like, “Yeah, well maybe she is amazing but not for people like me. Maybe she supports this person because they’ve got a thin body and because of me, she’s like, ‘No. I wouldn’t touch you with a 10-foot pole,’” because it’s too risky for her and for her job also.

They are up against it as well in the system and that’s something I have learned. My next mission was that I needed to find a midwife who was going to bat for me, not somebody who was going to be worried about losing their career because they come after the midwives too that are home birthing. So I had gone to the free birth podcast as well and I was listening to their stories. I was like, “They’re a bit out there for me. I’m not brave enough to do that. That’s a bit radical.” Eventually, my husband was the one that talked me into a free birth when we couldn’t have a midwife to support me. It took me a long time to feel okay with that choice because that is a very different choice than what a lot of people were making at the time.

Now I feel like home birth is very popular because everyone was flocking to it in COVID times and because of that, so many women are free birthing at least where I lived. And because I work in the space now, I see so many but there were only a handful of free birth doulas at the time. Now, everybody’s doing it. It’s like it’s no skin off anyone’s nose. It’s like, “Oh, just another free birth. Just another free birth.” It’s so normalized and it was very scary because I was the only one that was doing this, but also, the only one doing this that had a special scar and a high BMI.

I was looking for somebody like me who had made this same choice and there wasn’t really any. So I was kind of connecting with the VBACs and hearing their stories as I went along. That gave me faith and trust. I had to learn about physiological birth and I had to take on a lot of responsibility. If it was a poor outcome, it was on me. If it was a poor outcome in the hospital, it was on me anyways. I had to live with the consequence of that choice. And so that was a hard thing to work through that no matter what, it was on me. It was just who did I want to place blame on. To the rest of society, if I birthed in a hospital and I lost my baby, society would be loving me and supporting me. If I lost my baby in a home birth, I’d be demonized and burned at the stake.

As somebody who likes to fit in and not be– I’m not a Maverick-type personality I don’t think– it was quite challenging for me, but I eventually worked through it and I asked those questions to myself. I did this and I did that. I did healing and I did all of these things and I started my own podcast when I was 6 months, 5 months pregnant as well. It’s one thing to choose free birth, but then when you are pregnant, it’s like oh, there’s a baby now and all of these new fears come up. I got a doula straight away because I knew that I wanted emotional support. I wasn’t really sure that I needed physical support on the day. I felt really comfortable and capable of doing the birthing.

I had gotten up to 10 centimeters whilst pushing out the baby. I thought that maybe having her there for the placenta would be really helpful because I don’t know. I was worried about postpartum hemorrhaging and also the placenta. I really knew that as a highly sensitive person, I needed that extra emotional support and I knew that that’s what doulas did. It’s what I did for my postpartum clients and at this time, I had been working with clients for a few years and supporting clients for a couple of years through our program. I really realized how important this work was. I was looking for somebody like me basically to support me through that experience.

I went for somebody and this is why it’s important to choose the right people. I went for a free birth doula, but I went for a really tough person who was confident and strong. I didn’t go for a nurturing person because that to me wasn’t a strength and that you’re confident in this situation. Even though I said, “This is the support I want and need. Can you do this?” She didn’t have the personality to be able to deliver the kind of emotional support that I wanted. She had a very busy practice going on so she wasn’t able to support me the way I needed.

And also, she didn’t know what a highly sensitive– I find that some people are okay with minimal support that maybe you check in once a month or maybe you check-in every couple of months or just really checking in at the end of the pregnancy, some of the doulas do.

For me, I needed that every week, “Hey, how are you going? Are you alive? What’s going on for you? What kind of fears are you having?” I felt, as somebody that was free birthing for the first time who had PTSD and trauma, there was so much stuff that I needed support with, but I felt that I was really left to myself to kind of doula myself which is why now I work with women in this space doing the emotional support, but it was so easy that I didn’t have to go to the hospital, but I felt really alone through that period because I didn’t have the checks anymore. I didn’t have anyone checking in with me in that capacity. I didn’t have. It was COVID time, so I called a GP and got some scans and things that I wanted to get done which was really cool, but I was feeling really alone and that sort of thing.

I was lucky to call in some of my village of doulas and my postpartum doula really stepped in from about 30 weeks for me. She would come and visit me. She’s a very dear friend of mine. We were friends before. We were business friends, so I had a lot of friends through my work. They became really good friends. I really relied on them and they were more than happy and honored to be part of my journey. I learned the skill of support because I was teaching my clients, “You’ve got to have a circle of support. You’ve got to have people to support you. Let’s talk about this fear.” I was doing all of the things that I was teaching my clients. I thought, “I’d better do these things, otherwise I’m a bit of a hypocrite, right?”

Yeah. I was like, “I can’t ask my clients to do hard things if I’m not willing to do them, right?” Have hard conversations, put myself out there, and make myself vulnerable, so I was doing all of these things.

Meagan: But it’s hard to do. It’s easier to preach. It’s easier to preach.

Ashley: Oh yeah, it is easier. But then when it’s you, you’re like, “Oh, what if they say no? What if they don’t want to help me? What if I’m a nuisance?” and I just had to have faith. I’ve learned about boundaries this time and healthy mindsets, so it was a completely different experience. My friends didn’t understand free birth, but they supported me. They were hospital doulas, so I couldn’t sit down and say to them, “I’m really worried. What if my baby does die?” They would be like, “Maybe you should just go to hospital.” I couldn’t really have truthful, honest conversations because that would be quite scary.

Meagan: Yeah, man. You know, I just think what you just said is so powerful. “I couldn’t have truthful conversations because that would be scary.”

Ashley: Yeah, it would be because they would be scared.

Meagan: That is just so powerful to me because, in this world, we need to have that. We need to have those truthful conversations because they are going to be hard and they’re going to be scary, but you couldn’t.

Ashley: No. And that’s why because it was such a small percentage of people doing it, it was hard. In the free birth communities, there were varying people.

Meagan: I was going to say, was it quiet? Was it tight or did people talk about it?

Ashley: In the free birth community, it was full of people who were free birthing because they wanted to and that was their choice. They had access and were able to get midwives, but there’s a difference. There are people in the community who live and breathe it because it’s a Christian upbringing or their mother did it, or intuitively, they are intuitive and they are connected with it. They are naturalists. They are very crunchy whereas I’m more mainstream and I couldn’t get a midwife, so I’m like, “Boo-hoo me.” I couldn’t get what I wanted in the hospital.

Boo-hoo me, I can’t get support. I can’t even get the prenatal care that I really want because no midwives will support me because they were worried about their insurance. So while I’m in the free birth community, I didn’t feel like I fit in. I’m half in the mainstream space, half in the free birth because I’m not making this choice from, “Oh, I love the idea of free birth.” I was, “I want to have a home birth, but I can’t get a midwife, so what’s the next best thing?”

Meagan: You feel stuck too maybe a little bit where you’re like, “If I want this birth, this is what I have to do.”

Ashley: Yeah, exactly. It was the safest and best choice for me and my baby at the time, but I wasn’t making it from, “I’m so excited that this is my option.” Now, I’ve had the lived experience and confidence and I find that a lot of people, especially VBAC women or people who have had trauma in the hospital system if they choose to have a free birth, it’s usually from a space of so much baggage and so many emotional things that are coming with that. A lot of the time, they’re doing it because they want to protect their birth space from being interfered with by a medical person and they can’t trust even a midwife because even midwives can interfere in physiological birth, so they learn about free birth.

This is where I was at. I wanted a midwife, but I didn’t want a midwife. I don’t want somebody who’s going to judge me because of my size or because I’m a VBAC, they’re going to be like, “Oh, you’d better go to hospital now. You’ve been in labor for 12 hours.” That would crush my soul to have to go to a hospital, so I was worried about that because I had been listening to free birth stuff. But I was also interviewing Dr. Rachel Reed who lives here in Australia and Dr. Sarah Buckley. I don’t know if you know these ladies.

Ashley: Yes, Sarah Buckley. She’s got an amazing book. It’s on my desk here. I think it’s called Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering, and Dr. Rachel Reid. Sarah’s on undisturbed birth and she’s had a free birth herself. Rachel talks about physiological birth and instinctive birth, so if you grasp the concept of how we birth outside of the system without medicine and that our body instinctively does what it needs to do without any involvement from midwives, she shares her story of being an attending midwife and not interfering in births and allowing them to unfold which meant she had to really look at how she practiced and how much she was really disturbing births by, “Oh, it looks like a woman needs to get in this position. By telling the woman to get in this position, I’m going to disallow and see what happens.” She would share stories of this woman is getting in this crazy position, but she’s a second-time mom. She’s had a vaginal birth. I’m just going to see what happens.

Finding out the reason why the woman’s pointing her bum up to the sky is because the baby’s got its arm bent up and if she was standing up, gravity would have ripped her a new one whereas this is a slow birth. But nobody knows what’s going on except for her beautiful body and the nerves and everything that’s happening. I thought, “She’s a home birth midwife who’s attended hundreds of births in her career. She’s got a Ph.D. on this stuff. She knows what she’s talking about.”

And then there’s this other doctor, Sarah, who’s talking about the hormones and she’s talking about undisturbed birth and how important it is, so you can’t really have an undisturbed birth in a hospital setting. You could, but you would be putting everyone’s nerves and wits on end.

Meagan: You would be free birthing. You would be free-birthing in the hospital.

Ashley: You’d be free birthing in the hospital and everyone would be shaking out the door like, “Ohhhh.” You can have one at home, but what if I get someone who judges me because of my size or because they are worried about a VBAC? I also interviewed Melanie Jackson who did a study on free birth and why women of high-risk free birth. I asked her, “How would you feel attending a VBAC?” She said to me, “Generally, they do look for things with VBAC women.” They’re looking for the uterine rupture things, prolonged labor, surges between, infrequent surges and bleeding, and things like that. If you go over a certain time, they’re much more likely to transfer you to hospital.

So I’m like, “Okay, well that’s good to know. Do I really want somebody who’s going to possibly be trigger-happy at my birth and end up in hospital again and goodness knows what happens?” So I’m stuck between having to go with these midwives because I know that they do physicological birth and I don’t know about them. They are a risk for me. That’s where I was. And then when I got rejected by the midwives that I knew were physiological and stood back and watched, I was like, “That’s it for me. I guess I’m free birthing and I’m going to muster the strength.”

Meagan: Here we go.

Ashley: It was a very hard pregnancy with the HG again. It was a very different pregnancy. It was COVID times. I was lucky enough to get some of the appointments and scans and things without seeing a GP. I just kept saying I was seeing a midwife and I need you to do these scans or whatever and write the scripts for the scans. Actually, what had happened was I got to 38 weeks and my waters broke. It was the first time, so every experience is different. I was in my bed and I moved. I was like, “Did I just do that? Did I just make this happen?” I got up and I said to my husband, “Royce, Royce!” He’s running down the hallway. All of this water is coming out and he’s got a towel and he’s going behind me. I’m excited.

It was 4:00 again, so my last one was at 4:00 and this one was at 4:00. I called my doula. She said, “Okay. Just go back to bed.” I’m already putting myself on a clock because I’ve got the things that I’m willing to wait for too. 48 hours. 48 hours. I’ve got to have this baby in 48 hours, otherwise, I’m transferring in. I’m stressing myself out. I’m like, “Okay. I’ll get into bed and see what happens.”

Within a half hour, I was already contracting. I said, “Call her and tell her to come back down,” because I really wanted that womanly support and I wanted somebody with me. I always felt like both of my labors were going to be really quick because of my mum.

Meagan: Yeah, you hear, “Oh, how’d your mom birth? Oh, you’ll probably birth like that.”

Ashley: I went straightaway into labor and it was painful. I’m talking like very, very painful. My second one was fine. I could handle it. I was moving for hours before I asked for the epidural. This time, I went straight into it. I really think for me, it’s the fact that the waters went.

Meagan: Yeah. It does make a difference.

Ashley: It really did make a difference because I was in excruciating pain when the waters went and the same with this one. I thought, “Oh, what am I going to do? I’m going to sit on the toilet. No, that doesn’t work. I’m going to sit on the birthing ball. No, that doesn’t work. I’m going to lay on the bed. Okay, that’s okay. That’s okay, but I’m still stressing.” Music goes on. Hubby’s got the music on. I’ve got my birthing [inaudible], deep breathing. I’m moaning. I’ve got me on video. I’m just looking at my video now like, “You were in so much pain. I feel for you.”

My kids are getting up. They are so excited. They’ve been trained. They’re little doulas. They’re like, “You’re so good, mom.” I can feel their high energy and I’m looking at them like, “I just hate everyone right now. I hate your soul.” On the video, they’re all like, “What’s mummy doing? She’s in labor. It’s so exciting.” They’re little faces. My husband was so excited and I’m in hell. And then eventually, I got into the birthing pool and I was still in hell. I was breathing through it and I was looking through my affirmations. My husband had scrambled to get the birthing pool and put everything out because we weren’t expecting me to go into labor until 40 weeks.

I said to my doula, “Is this normal? Is this normal? Is this normal?” “Yeah, yeah. It’s fine.” I’m like, “Can you hold my hand because I really need to hold your hand right now?” I’m doing the cone and I’m breathing and she’s giving me some water and she’s doing a little homeopathic thing. I’m moaning. Nobody really knew the pain that I was in because it was all inside and internalized. I look at videos and it’s very peaceful and calm. I don’t look like I’m in much pain. I’m dealing with it really well. I’m very quiet.

And then eventually, maybe after about 4 hours of that really challenging pain, I flipped a switch. There was nothing. It was just bliss. Peaceful, calm, no real pain. I mean, I was having surges and then I started pushing. I started to have pushing urges. Every third or fourth contraction, I was pushing. I was pushing out poop, so I was like, “Okay. This is great.” My husband’s having to clean it up.

Meagan: It’s a good start.

Ashley: It felt so satisfying and my body was taking over. I had no control. It was so satisfying and I would get on my knees and lean over the pool. I was bearing down, and then I would have a few contractions and I would just be laying back in the water relaxed. In between them, I was laughing. My leg went numb and I was like, “Oh god. My leg really hurts. I wish I could chop it off. It’s so painful.” I was leaning on the other side. I thought, “Is it because I’m laying on it?” But it wasn’t. It was the baby. I didn’t know that at the time.

The baby made my leg go numb and I didn’t realize it. I had another posterior baby. I had a bit of pain in my back, but not too much. My theory is and I believe this to be true considering that I was 10 centimeters in 7 hours. I think the real pain for me was dilation. I think I got fully dilated and then knowing what I know about the pushing stage– I know the different stages and I know the different variations of normal now through Dr. Rachel Reed. I realized that what I had been taught about early labor, active labor, transition, and pushing stage isn’t true for every woman.

Every woman is different. I had posterior babies, so I pushed every third or fourth contraction because I had fully dilated, but my baby now had to come down and I knew that because of my last one. So the whole rest of labor was my body pushing and my baby rotating. My husband said to me, “Look, you can see the baby is moving,” because you can actually see my stomach moving. I was like, “Oh wow, yeah.” It was literally just allowing that process to unfold the way that it needed to, listening to my body and getting into the positions that felt right for me. I had instructed my doulas to not tell me, coach me, or put me into any positions because I believed in undisturbed, instinctive birth and I wanted to allow it to unfold the way that it needed to unfold.

I felt that was the safest way for me to birth my baby outside of the hospital setting. If I was birthing in a hospital setting, I would want to get that baby out as quickly as possible because there are a whole set of rules that happened in the hospital, but when you’re at home, you can do whatever you like and that’s what I really love about the birth that I had.

Eventually, we were just going through that process. My husband was in the pool, he was out of the pool, and he was supporting me. People were laughing. The doulas went outside to give my husband and me a bit of privacy. There was a bit of a fuss about, “Have you done a wee? I can’t do a [wee]. I’m trying to do a wee. I’m trying to get a wee.” I watched a bit of orgasmic birth, so I said, “Why don’t we just get a little bit frisky for a bit and see if I can get wee?” So my husband was touching me and I was touching him. I still couldn’t wee. I was really fixated on that and I really wish I hadn’t. It was every now and then. I’m like, “Oh maybe it’s the water.” The wee is stopping the baby from coming out and getting me ahead a little bit which is why I don’t like people asking things, but I understand why people do ask things because they’re checking if you’re okay.

Eventually, I said to my husband, “Oh, can you put your hands in there and see if you can feel anything?” Before, I had felt this huge push, this humungous poop the size of a head was coming out. I was like, “Oh my god. I’m going to do the biggest poop,” but of course, it was the baby’s head coming right down. I didn’t know at the time and it was baby’s head coming down. I said, “Can you put your fingers in?” He said, “It feels like a kiwi fruit.” Do you know what a kiwi fruit is?

Meagan: Mhmm, yeah.

Ashley: Like a little soft, hairy–

Meagan: Yep.

Ashley: He’s like, “Well, maybe it’s a muscle though.” I’m like, “Oh, well maybe I’ve prolapsed.” This is what we’re thinking. I’m like, “Oh well, what will be what will be.” Of course, a kiwi fruit is a baby’s head.

Meagan: A squished, fuzzy baby head.

Ashley: We were so clueless.

Meagan: I love that he said that it felt like a kiwi fruit.

Ashley: He has no idea, like absolutely no idea but it’s so funny looking back at it now. Eventually, I knew. I started pushing and the doulas came running in. Everyone was excited and eventually, she was coming in and out and in and out, and then eventually, she came out. The doula said to my husband, “Don’t touch the baby. Move away from the baby. Don’t touch her.” I was like, “Why is she saying that? I’ve watched so many videos of babies being born and the mum’s encouraged to touch the baby’s head. What’s happening?” I’m thinking, “In breech birth, you’re not supposed to touch the baby.” I’m in my head again now.

Meagan: Because people are talking.

Ashley: People are talking. I’m feeling scared and I had no more contractions. I’ve completely talked myself out of contractions. I’m like, “There are no contractions.” And then her shoulders are out and her head was out. I’m like, “Okay, what do I do?” Because once that happens, the baby always comes out. I’m like, “Okay, well can you pull the baby out?” to my husband. He’s trying, but he doesn’t want to hurt the baby. He’s really soft. I’m like to my doulas, “Can you pull him?” “No, we don’t do that.” “Okay.”

I’m just going to purple-push here because I don’t know what to do. I’m pushing, pushing, pushing and eventually, I’m going black in my visuals.

Meagan: Pushing so hard in your head.

Ashley: Yeah. Eventually, she pops out. It must have only been a minute or two, but in that time, they were yelling at me, “Push! Push!” I’m getting all of the things I didn’t want. Coached pushing and I could feel their energies because I’m empathic and one of the things I pick up the most are people’s feelings and energies. I know that everyone’s freaking out. Nobody knows any answers and I’m just like, “Oh my god.”

She was born. She was happy and she came to me. I felt and I’m like, “Oh, it’s a girl. I thought it was a girl,” and then my doula comes racing around. She was like, “I think there’s a bit of labored breathing. I think you should call the ambulance.” I was like, “Okay. Well, just call the ambulance then.” The ambulance was called and they were there within a few minutes and then my doula said, “We think you should–” At this point, you have to understand from the birthing point of view, I’ve handed all of my power over to somebody else to make those choices for me because there were a few suggestions on birthing on positions throughout and I rolled my eyes and I was like, “I’ve got this. No one’s telling me what to do.”

But because I handed over that power, and I think there is a place to have some collaboration, but I think that for me, I would have preferred if I had taken the full responsibility on, but for whatever reason, I had it in my head that that’s how it was going to go or that. It is the way it is and I accept that path, but I’ve certainly learned a lot of, “Ashley needs to take full responsibility next time,” but I don’t think that’s for everyone and I don’t think that women need to birth like that either.

If we look at thousands of years before us, we’ve been birthing with wise women and that’s the whole reason I had the experienced person in my room with me, so I could rely on her experience and wisdom. It’s just a shame that some of those things unfolded the way they did, but she suggested that we cut the cord and my husband pick her up. As soon as that happened, she let out the biggest cry. I knew she was totally fine.

Yeah, I was really happy that she was fine. I didn’t get to have the things that I really wanted to have like the golden hour and the crawl to the breast and things like that that is really sold in the home birth community of why you have a home birth. I was just so grateful to have my vaginal birth, but I know that other people like some of my clients– it is a little bit disappointing when you don’t get the thing that you want at the end.

Meagan: Totally.

Ashley: But then baby was cleaned and she was fine, but then what had happened was it was all attention on me. My doula was like, “Has the placenta come out? Can you stand up? Can you get the placenta out?” and things like that. There was a lot of blood in the pool.

Meagan: Sometimes when it’s in the pool, it looks like a lot.

Ashley: It does look like a lot and the other reason why I hired her was because she had experience with that whereas I didn’t have the experience. I know that a lot of free birth is transferred in from blood loss because they don’t have the experience of knowing what is normal or in water, it looks like a lot but it really is nothing.

That’s a unique experience and that’s why it’s really important to have wise people with you if that’s what you want or feeling confident. Personally, I think it’s probably better to tap into yourself and listen to how you feel rather than sometimes what you are seeing because I know from experience, I can handle a lot more than some other people can, so what might be okay and acceptable for that birth– I’m a heavy bleeder for periods for example. Maybe my body works a little bit differently so I think tapping into that intuition and knowing how you feel.

People know if they feel like crap or if they feel pretty good. But yes, then another ambulance was called and another ambulance and another ambulance. Yeah. I had this protocol that if I had lost a certain amount, they had to give me a bag of bloods before I came into hospital even though I live 5 or 7 minutes from the hospital. They were just waiting for this one ambulance to come that had my blood type on board.

Then they had to give it to me and eventually, 2 hours later, we got to the hospital. By this point, I’m pretty much passing out.

Meagan: So you were bleeding.

Ashley: I was bleeding, but they called my doula to ask her how much blood loss there was. They didn’t ask the ambulance which, they were there and they saw, so I don’t really know how much blood I lost. I feel like I lost probably the same as I did with my second baby because that’s what they said that she said. My doula said, “I think she’s lost about 3 liters or 2 liters.”

When I got into hospital, they were waiting for me. They were ready and straightaway, they tried to do the removal without any medication, just putting their hand up my vagina and trying to manually remove it which was very, very painful. It felt like a shovel going in and coming out.

After three attempts, I said, “Stop. I do not consent to this.” She said, “Okay, fine.” I was screaming before that, but that doesn’t matter because all they listen to is the actual legal words, “I do not consent. I want to be put under. I want surgery. I want to do under.” I did not want to be awake for this. I knew after my last experience, I was just out.

The anesthesiologist was like, “I can do that. I am more than happy to do that.” I was like, “Yes. That is amazing.” I was so happy that this one was willing to put me under and agreed that it was safe for me to do. I signed the waiver of what could happen. I could lose my uterus. I could have this or that. I woke up in the ICU. They said that because my blood pressure dropped so low, I think, because of the blood loss, I went into ICU. I think it’s standard practice to stay there for 12 hours and then if you do fine in that period of time, they then move you on to that room with a midwife for an hour, and then if you– I call it graduation– graduate that room, then I graduated that one and then I was just in maternity and I was treated like everyone else.

But this time, I was back at the first hospital sharing a room. This time, I was the hot gossip of the hospital because I’m the free birther who came in and had a vaginal birth on my own after how many surgeries.

Meagan: All the things.

Ashley: All the things. Big baby, high BMI, 99% of them were pretty supportive and then there were a few that were midwives who were like, “You were so lucky that you didn’t tear. You were so lucky this didn’t happen.” One went up to my husband and said, “Promise me. You tell me you will never do something silly like that again.” He was so shocked that this weird old lady came up to him and was telling us what we should be doing. He just looked at her and he said in his mind, “No, I’m not going to say anything back to her. I’m just going to let it go.” She had been spending the whole time bitching about her daughter so she was just one of those people about her future birth choices and mothering choices, so she wasn’t a lovely lady anyways.

But they went above and beyond to really support me and listen to me. I went along with some of their crazy things. They wanted to do all of these tests on me and stuff. The thing is, they’re very fearful. I said, “Can I just have another bag of blood? I’m really tired. I know from experience that this is going to happen again.” They said, “We’d better do all of these tests on you just to make sure because you could die tonight.”

You could have a clot in your lungs, so I had a heart test and a lung test, and the fluids come through my body. I had all of the things done. It must have all come back good because they eventually said, “Okay, look. We’ll give you an iron transfusion.” I said as again, “Ashley knows what’s right for her body, right? But I’ll go along with your crazy tests,” which at the time was in the middle of the night. So at the time when I was supposed to be getting sleep, I’m getting wheeled across the hospital getting all of these tests to satisfy them.

But I understand. They think that I am a crazy free birther so they were really worried about me because I didn’t get prenatal care even though I had two scans and blood tests throughout. I had all of the things that you pretty much do. Maybe I just didn’t have the blood pressure readings which is really interesting that they view that in such a way, and then my baby was in special care because my husband came in and it’s very common practice for them to take the baby for a home birther or a free birther. They always try and take that baby into special care because they don’t know what prenatal care the baby had.

I didn’t know it at the time, but now that I’ve interviewed so many people on my podcast and I have spoken to people in the community, I realize it’s quite normal practice and they are legitimately very fearful for that baby. They are on the opposite side of the fence. They think that prenatal care is like, if you don’t have it, your baby is going to be deformed, but prenatal care is nothing. If anything, prenatal care for me was anxiety-driven, negative, and horrible. It’s just having a couple of scans and some bloodwork which is what I had during the time.

She ended up going on CPAP because she had that labored breathing even though the ambulance said it was okay which led to eventually, she had mild jaundice which we consented to. She had antibiotics.

Meagan: A lot of babies have jaundice.

Ashley: Yeah. So I consented to her going under the lights. I regret some of the stuff. I didn’t know and so they don’t practice informed consent a lot of the time. They just are doing what they are doing with the babies. It was like, “Can I breastfeed my baby?” and I had to get myself to the special care unit and breastfeed my baby. I was running myself ragged trying to breastfeed. It was an interesting experience. I feel like this is the positive takeaway.

It’s like, so you’ve done all of these things now. Now you can help so many more people because you’ve lived through all of these experiences and you understand how challenging it can be. Also, you can inform people. Now you know how to prepare yourself. My audience can prepare themselves for birth planning and special care planning. Also, how do you advocate if you end up in this situation? You can say no or yes. These are the things that they are probably going to recommend and that sort of thing.

That’s the positive takeaway I take from that experience. I also feel like I really healed myself with the hospital itself on the second birth because they treated me with respect and they really wanted to– I felt like they actually cared about me. Some of them had a few tears and I thought, “Well, you are a human. That’s all I ever wanted. I just wanted you to listen to me and respect me. If you did that, I would come back and birth in this space.”

Not now, but I would want to get in the birthing pool. If you respected me to do some of the things, then it would be a safe space for me, but if you’re going to be the opposite and you’re not going to be on my side, then I can’t feel safe with you. I understand their fear. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it from their point of view, but I think they need to spend some time thinking about it and seeing it from ours.

So if they heard our stories and they really understood that it’s not just a baby’s life that matters, it’s the fact that this woman is going to carry this for the rest of her life and it’s going to shape her motherhood journey and it’s going to dictate the kind of person that she’s going to be in 10-20 years because some women can end up depressed. They could not look after their child. They can have bonding issues for years.

Meagan: Even deeper.

Ashley: Yeah. They don’t understand that when I say to them, “Healthy baby is not acceptable. I was always going to have a healthy baby, but you’ve done this to me.” They do not understand trauma and they do not understand the human-to-human connection. That’s not their field. That’s not what they signed up for and it’s not how they treat each other and it’s not how they’re treated. They’re run ragged in the hospital system and their culture is, “I’ve worked for 50 hours this week and I’m doing another two days.” It’s who is the biggest, strongest, and badass, who’s done the most surgeries on the most complicated people. That is their culture for a lot of them.

It’s two competing things. I work with people and I care about hearts, humans, and stories. I care about how people feel and they are more masculine. They don’t care about how people feel. They care about people living and an outcome that they know that they are not going to get in trouble with their insurance. It’s really a shame on the insurance companies as well for supporting and encouraging that because they are the driving force. These people can’t practice without insurance and the only way they can feel safe is by doing surgeries on people which is more dangerous than vaginal birth. I don’t understand it, but that’s the driving force.

It’s a pretty insidious culture to start with.

Meagan: I just made a post the other day about a safe and healthy baby and mom. That’s all that matters, right? It’s so not right. It’s so wrong. Of course, everybody wants a healthy baby and a healthy mom. Of course, but there is so much more to it. I love that. I wish that we could somehow get in front of providers and say, “Listen to these people’s stories. Listen to how this experience affected them or what this did for them,” because like you said, they are driven in other ways. Yeah. They love and care for the patient the best they can and they want them to have a good, healthy baby and mom but they do. They have these blinders on and they sometimes look past the experience and what trauma.

Sometimes it’s not even things being done, but things said or things not being done and being left alone. There’s so much. So much.

Ashley: The thing that I’ve been grappling with lately is I did listen to an obstetrician who did start listening to Dr. Rachel Reed and she started to realize that some of the stuff she had been doing is actually traumatizing and hurting people and babies. Dr. Reed talks about this because she teaches midwives. It’s like, “This is how we were trained in hospital. This is how we were trained in university, but this is all wrong and this is why it’s all wrong because it’s based on this kind of birth. I have to take responsibility that I’ve caused harm when I thought I was helping.”

How do you take responsibility for that knowing that potentially hundreds of poor outcomes have happened that you’re responsible for? That alone is so heavy and in our society, people can’t deal with the smallest of things let alone that mammoth responsibility. We don’t even know how to deal with things. We’re not even allowed to feel things. Who are they going to turn to do even debrief without being dismissed or told, “No. You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re a doctor,” in our society?

There are so many steps that need to happen. Even a few of them, this obstetrician is training other obstetricians and talking about it. They are going to listen to and respect her much more than a midwife. It’s just a stinky old midwife. When they say a witch, I see it in the newspapers. Hypnobirthing is all witchcraft or hocus pocus. The degrading things to try to bring it down as if it’s a mockery and nothing. “We’re doing medical science.”

There are so many steps and so many things, but if you can get past that and work through that, then you’ve got to completely change how you practice and then you need to, at that point, change everything you do and how you practice. Then, you’re the black sheep in your establishment. You might go from the top surgeon to maybe you’re doing VBACs or you’re doing vaginal birth now and that’s weird. You’ve got to transform yourself. There are a lot of steps. It doesn’t mean that people can’t make small changes and people can’t make a positive impact because even just having a conversation and saying, “Look, you know what? I think you should go see this midwife.”

You might be losing clients, but even in America for example with private people, you go, “I’m not really happy to take you on in my career, but I know a midwife,” and then that midwife sends their surgery people to you. I think you’d be better with a surgeon. This surgeon prefers doing this. They will do more medical. I will help you have a vaginal birth. There are some of those things that are small steps to start rather than, “I don’t agree with home birth. I don’t agree with midwife birth.” Explore and open your eyes. Obviously, those people aren’t listening to this podcast now, so that’s not really beneficial for them, but it’s just some thoughts that I’ve been having when I’m trying to think about the bigger picture, how can we make a change?

I think of podcasts like this. You changed my life. It was the planting of a seed to opportunity and I know just from listening to a podcast, women say to me, “Oh, because of your podcast, I had my free birth.” I had this amazing birth and I’m healed. It was a positive thing and I didn’t have anyone calling CPS on me or telling me that this was going to happen. I’m so happy for you. It’s a labor-intensive thing to do a podcast. You know yourself. It is a labor-intensive thing, but if it’s a little piece of how we can help, I think your podcast paved the way for VBACs and really opened that space up. Now there are so many more resources out there and people supporting and doulas supporting in that space and knowing, so it really does make a difference.

I know that we were discussing before that what the next level is and what we can do further which is exciting.

Meagan: Oh my gosh. I’m obsessed with this podcast and can’t wait to relisten to it. You’re just a delight. I am so grateful for you being here and sharing your stories. You’ve been through a lot. You’ve been through a lot. You’ve learned a lot and you’ve come a long way. Here you are inspiring people, educating people, and helping people process and learn. If you wouldn’t mind, first of all, tell people where to find your podcast and your Instagram, and then share more of what you do and where they can find you.

Ashley: Sure. I created my podcast when I was about 5 or 6 months pregnant. The reason I created it is because I wanted to listen to home birth stories. I was like, “I had a VBAC.” I listened to all of the stories and I was like, “No. Now I need home birth and free birth VBAC stories,” so it was a very selfish mission and then I was able to connect with people who I considered birth experts and I could ask more questions for my podcast but really for me. It’s called the VBAC Homebirth Stories Podcast and you can listen to it on all of the podcast players.

My Instagram handle is @ashleylwinning and I’m sure you will link it anyways. I work with women virtually all over the world who are having home births and free births, usually women who are having second and third babies who have had traumatic experiences or Cesareans previously. Usually, the women connect with something about my story. They’ve got a special scar or have had a Cesarean before or something. Maybe they are a bigger woman or highly sensitive. My field is really working in high touch with my clients because, after my experience, I was like, “I really want other people to have the same support as me.”

I hid behind the fact that I was weak. I wasn’t really embracing that about me. I am really starting to embrace that, you know what? Just because I value emotional support and connection doesn’t mean that I’m the only person in the world who needs that. Now I am connecting with so many highly emotional, highly sensitive women and empathic women who get really anxious in the mind. They overthink things so what we can do a lot of the time is overthink our choices. We are overthinking the things that are happening. We are overanalyzing and we’re overplanning and we’re procrastinating. We’re living in fear and sometimes that can spiral out of control where it completely consumes your life.

You need to have someone that you know is safe to talk to about all of your fears deeply and that isn’t going to make you feel like an inconvenience is available for you all the time because a lot of doulas lack 24/7 support.

Meagan: But don’t really call me.

Ashley: Yeah and then you message them and it’s a week before they get back to you. You feel so unloved and unsupported. I really set boundaries with my clients and let them know that every Monday I’m going to message you so that they know every Monday. If you don’t get back to me, that’s cool. I know you’re a pregnant person. Don’t ever feel– my clients are also worried, “Oh, I didn’t get back to Ashley,” because they are highly sensitive. I say, “Don’t stress. I’m here to support you. Don’t worry about me. I’m looking out for myself. I’m here to look after you.” It’s having that high-touch support and connection.

We do virtual sessions like we are talking here every fortnight and that’s a space to unload everything, all of your fears, all of your worries. We go through mindset stuff but also, I find that women talk about their partners getting on their nerves or their kids or motherhood stuff or work stuff, so we work on boundaries and mindset things and fear things. We going into the evidence. We go into physiological birth. It’s a whole mixture of motherhood. It’s a full circle of things and then we get them prepared for their postpartum too because I trained as a postpartum doula. I find that my clients, even though they’ve had a postpartum, they often lack the ability to reach out to their network because they are highly sensitive and say, “Can you please help me with this? Can you please help me with that? Can you look after my child?”

I basically am supporting them as they grow the strength the way I was supported to really put myself out there and be vulnerable and create the life that I wanted. That’s what I see as the starting foundations of a woman truly being herself, loving herself, and advocating for the things that she wants. Eventually, I hope that she takes those skills and nurtures them to be the person that she wants to be and find some bliss and everything.

Meagan: I love that. Such amazing things that you are doing. You are such an amazing resource. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Ashley: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Closing

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