VBA2C Success Story - VBAC Success Story After 2 Cesareans
VBA2C Success Story
I’m simultaneously excited and also anxious to write out my VBA2C success birth story. When something goes only partly according to plan, it can be really easy for me to struggle to see past any disappointment. I like to go “all in” on things and it’s easy for me to label things as an all around failure if any part of it wasn’t “successful”. But overall, VBAC stories are truly incredible and this is a VBAC success story that is worth sharing!
So there you have a very vague intro to one of the hardest and most beautiful and slightly disappointing days of my life.
It feels wrong to label it as disappointing, but I’m working on being honest with my emotions even when those emotions might be negative. That’s no easy feat for this enneagram 7, who has a tendency to always spin things to be positive. But, I would be doing a real disservice to the many other women out there whose birth didn’t go perfectly. So I’ll call my VBAC birth what it was: Beautiful. Healing. Hard. Disappointing.
Because this was my third birth, I think it’s important to give a brief background because my birth background influences every single part of this VBA2C success story.
Emergency C-section
When I was pregnant with our first in 2017, Jackson and I became really interested in natural birth. We watched some documentaries and did some research and ultimately ended up taking a birthing class called The Bradley Method, which you can read more about here. It is a birthing course essentially all about empowering dads to be present and a true part of the natural birthing process instead of just a spectator. We were all in. We learned about pain management during a natural birth, Jackson learned how to coach through contractions and we were genuinely pumped for my labor and birth.
We were in a traditional OB setting and when I didn’t go into labor by 40 weeks, my OB suggested an induction. We pushed back because we knew how perfectly normal and expected it is to go past your “due date”, especially for a first time mom. So 41 weeks came and went and I was still pregnant. After another induction speech and after doing a NST to verify that Eliot was healthy, we pushed the induction back again. And then 42 weeks came and we knew we were at the end of the road. We agreed to an induction at 42 weeks and 1 day. To make a longer story as short as possible, our induction didn’t go well at all. Eliot didn’t handle the Pitocin well and after only about 5 hours in the hospital, we were rushed back for an emergency cesarean due to fetal heart stress.
I was heart broken. I had barely gotten the opportunity to labor and I didn’t get the beautiful birth experience I had spent so much time preparing for. But Eliot was healthy and I was healthy and I felt guilty for mourning my birth outcome at all.
One night during a MOTN feeding, I started researching VBAC stories. What is the VBAC success rate? What are the benefits of VBAC? What is VBAC? I was surprised to find some really positive information. The VBAC success rate statistics are actually incredibly encouraging and the uterine rupture risk rate with a VBAC is actually not significantly higher than with a repeat cesarean. So, at 3 weeks postpartum, I knew I wanted to try for a VBAC with our next, whenever that would be.
C-section number 2
Just 18 months later, I was pregnant with our second. The idea of a VBAC was exciting and hopeful. I read tons of articles, listened to all the podcasts and joined multiple VBAC friendly Facebook groups. I joined the OB practice with the highest VBAC rate in Austin and had a long talk with my new OB at my first appointment to make sure she would be VBAC friendly.
The night after my due date, I was shocked when I went into labor naturally. I had never experienced a natural labor process and was so thrilled that I wasn’t going to have to be induced again. After 24 hours of inconsistent contractions, I woke up the next morning at 2 am to stronger more consistent contractions and realized this was it. My OB had requested that I come in to the hospital in early labor since I was a attempting a TOLAC (trial of labor after cesarean). We got to the hospital around 3 am and I was 3 cm dilated. They admitted me and we began what would become a long day of laboring at the hospital.
Two hospital policies really impacted me that day: the first is that TOLAC moms are not allowed to eat while in labor. This meant that I went 13 hours with no food, which led to a huge lack of energy. The second was the hospital policy for TOLAC moms to continuously monitor the fetal heart rate, which meant wearing a fetal heart rate monitor strapped to my stomach constantly. This meant that every time I started to labor effectively in a squatted position on the ground or by leaning against the birthing ball, the nurses would lose track of the fetal heart rate and I would have to lie in the bed for 3 contractions for them to track it. This started happening about every 15 minutes.
If you’ve ever had to lie flat on your back during a natural labor, you know how much this has the potential to increase pain. It was like I was constantly taking one step forward and 3 steps back. Going to summarize again here because a lot went into that day, but ultimately after 13 hours of labor at the hospital, I hadn’t progressed past 6 cm and my OB suggested a cesarean. I was heartbroken, again. All of the hours spent preparing and the over 24 hours that I spent in labor felt like it was all for nothing. I was completely wiped and fearing another emergency c-section and so we agreed to the cesarean.
I was flooded with all the same emotions as my first birth. I felt heart broken and betrayed by my body. How could I want something so badly and my body just “not work”? Pair that with the guilt of mourning a birthing experience when I had a perfectly healthy baby in my arms. It was a lot to process.
Third Pregnancy- My VBAC Success Story
Fast-forward another 18 months and I was pregnant with our third. A month after we found out that I was pregnant we decided to move to Lubbock. I did some research and the option of attempting a VBA2C looked pretty bleak. It seemed pretty impossible to find an OB that would let me try for another VBAC with my history. I decided to look into using a birthing center that many of my friends have had great experiences at, called Heartbeat Midwifery.
My first appointment was like a breathe of fresh air. Instead of being told all of the reasons I shouldn’t try a VBAC, the midwife said “It looks like you’re a great VBAC candidate”. I genuinely felt shocked and so excited knowing I would be able to try for a VBAC one last time.
So here we are, all caught up to present day. I had a pretty normal pregnancy until the third trimester. When I was 35 weeks pregnant I ended up in the hospital with unreal abdominal pain. The on-call OB thought I was having a uterine rupture because of the intensity of my pain. In the midst of throwing up and being in the fetal position in the hospital, I heard the OB and nurse discussing a cesarean due to my blood pressure and pain and it felt like I was on a never ending merry-go-round of my births going awry. Thankfully, the pain passed and they discovered that I had had a gallstone attack due to some large gallstones that were blocking my gallbladder.
The next morning when the OB came to check on me, his first words to me were “what are you thinking trying to have a VBAC? You’re a terrible candidate and you’re putting your life and your babies life at risk”.
This was the first time my entire pregnancy that I started to question my decision. I knew that statistics were in my favor. I knew that VBAC’s are overwhelmingly a safe option and that cesareans come with their own risks. But to have a professional tell me that I was risking the life of my baby was hard to just move past.
This was the beginning of the fear and doubt that would end up affecting me mentally during labor, but we’ll get to that.
Beginning of Labor
At 39 weeks I started experiencing some pretty intense prodromal labor. This is basically labor that starts, can be strong and intense, but never becomes consistent. Every night for the next week and a half I would have strong contractions between 12-4 am and then they would taper off. It was emotionally and physically draining.
At my 40-week appointment, I asked for a membrane sweep to hopefully help my body progress a bit. That was on a Friday and my midwife told me that I could come back on Monday if nothing happened over the weekend. After a long weekend of tons of prodromal labor I decided to go back in on Monday for another sweep.
This is when things got real. I got the sweep at 3 pm on Monday and immediately started to have stronger contractions. By 8 pm I was pretty confident that I was going to have a baby soon and decided to take a bath and try to get some sleep.
I woke up at 11 pm with stronger contractions than I had been having but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I stayed in bed and did my best to ignore the contractions and sleep when I could. Around 12:30 they were getting too strong to sleep through. I got out of bed and felt some relief by leaning against the side of the bed.
By 1 am they were coming pretty strong. My mom heard me laboring and came into the living room with Jackson and I and I went ahead and called my best friend Kenzie who’s a serious rockstar and basically played doula for the next 12 hours as well as our birth photographer, Britney, who’s equally a rockstar and also a certified doula. Kenzie got to our house around 2 and let Jackson get some more sleep and Brittney got there around 2:30. I continued to labor with my mom, Kenzie and Brittney and felt a lot of relief laboring on the toilet.
Around 3:30 the contractions picked up in intensity quite a bit and so we decided to head in to the birth center. We got there and go settled and my midwife checked my dilation. I was shocked when she said I was at a 6! I had already progressed to the point that took me over 24 hours with Judah! I felt encouraged and hopeful and capable, all things I had rarely ever felt in regards to labor or birth.
I got into the tub pretty much immediately and spent all morning laboring in the tub. I felt on top of contractions and I felt in control of my pain. I was working through each contraction with deep mooing sounds. I felt so supported and encouraged by the team around me. It felt like everything was finally going right.
Around 7:45 am my midwife checked me and realized that a portion of my cervix hadn’t softened, called a cervical lip, and was preventing Levi from descending. She suggested working through some different positions to try and get my cervix complete. My midwife suggested trying to manually move the lip during a contraction so that Levi’s head could get past it and I agreed.
This was definitely one of the most difficult parts of my labor and I asked if we could try the position changes before doing it again. I got out of the tub and moved to the bed. We did some Spinning babies positions and then I labored on the floor for a bit.
The positions we worked on felt intense and painful and I was starting to struggle with staying on top of my contractions. The positions were working, though, and at 8:20 my water broke.
After my water broke, my contractions intensified quickly. I got back into the tub to try to get back on top of my contractions. I was able to relax more in the tub and lean into my contractions and it felt like things were starting to progress again. I felt more in control and was at 8 cm.
After laboring this way for a couple more hours, 2 things happened which shaped the rest of my labor: The first was that I started to feel a sharp pain in my lower abdomen. It was likely round ligament pain and not a threat to me or to Levi at all, but all of the fears I had tried to push past leading up to birth started to overwhelm me. I could hear the Doctor’s voice in my head telling me that I was putting my child’s life in danger. I could see the (very few) negative VBAC birth stories I had read about playing out. I could feel my heart preparing to break at what felt like the inevitable failing of my body to birth vaginally.
The ability that fear has to impact labor is honestly mind blowing and in that moment it started to play a big role, mentally. I began to feel panicky that I might be having a uterine rupture, even though I showed no signs at all of that occurring. The midwives maintained their support and encouragement and continued to encourage my body’s abilities.
Shortly after the abdominal pain started, I began feeling an extremely painful shooting pain in the back of my thigh. It was unlike anything I have ever felt and quickly became the focus of my pain. Every contraction came with what felt like a knife digging into my leg. My midwives thought that it would be a good idea to try some nitros oxide to see if that would bring enough relief for me to keep going.
Looking back, I think I could have worked through one of these things occurring. I think I could have mentally worked through the abdominal pain and gotten past my fears or I could have worked through the physical pain happening in my leg, but as they happened simultaneously I began to be very overwhelmed.
Contractions were happening very consistently now and I was struggling to get on top of my pain or breathe through them at all. I had gone from feeling very in control to feeling very out of control. This isn’t all that uncommon during transition, which is usually the part of labor where women tend to struggle most with being in control. But the combination of being in transition paired with the pain I was feeling in my leg and the fear I was struggling with mentally began to really distract me from laboring productively.
Transferring to the hospital
At this point we started discussing moving to the hospital. It wasn’t what I wanted to do at all but it was starting to feel like it was the necessary move if I couldn’t refocus my labor. I felt that if I could at least get relief from the pain in my leg, which by this point was feeling completely unbearable, that I would be able to refocus and birth our son.
Heading to the hospital this deep into labor was as dramatic as you might imagine. The drive to the hospital felt unbelievably long, even though it was less than 5 minutes. In the car I started to feel the huge urge to push and realized that I was experiencing the fetal ejection reflex.
We got to labor and delivery and it could have been a movie scene. Imagine- me rolling out of the passenger side of the car and immediately squatting to the ground as my body is attempting to involuntarily push Levi out. My mom and our photographer Britney were crammed in the back on top of car seats. I waddled through the hospital doors and we were met with a nurse with a wheel chair who wheeled me to the triage room.
When we got in they checked me and I was 10 cm but I still had a cervical lip. I was begging for relief of my leg pain at this point. The contraction pain felt bearable but the leg pain had become all-consuming. They told me they didn’t want to put pain meds into my IV drip because it would make Levi drowsy, so they suggested an epidural. While all of this chaos is happening, the fetal ejection reflex was getting stronger and stronger and every contraction felt like I might burst from the pressure.
I hope you’re imagining how very wild and messy this was because it was every bit you’re imagining, I’m sure.
I have this desire to clean the story up, act like everything was calm and smooth and that I was handling the pain with grace but the reality is the opposite. It was messy and loud and frantic. The anesthesiologist finally came in to do the epidural. Sitting up on the bed, while my body is trying to forcibly push my baby out and having to try to be still while he inserted the epidural into my spine felt impossible, but somehow we made it happen.
And then the wrong side of my body went numb, because of course it did. They had me lay on my side to try to work the epidural to my left side and after a few minutes I finally got just a tiny bit of relief, but it was all I needed to be able to refocus on my contractions.
With my leg pain now manageable, the doctor came back in to check me and finally the cervical lip was gone and it was time to push! Hearing that it was time to push felt so very surreal to me. I had waited through three births to hear those words and it felt unreal that I was actually going to accomplish a VBA2C.
Successful VBAC
The rest of the story is pretty straight forward and finally drama free! I pushed for about 30 minutes and Levi was born at 1:38 pm!
I want to pause here to send some serious praise to my midwives. They were incredible throughout this entire process. They practically carried me into the hospital and then stayed by my side throughout everything. They were on each side of the bed and coached me and encouraged me through pushing.
They did such a great job, that after I had delivered Levi, the doctor said “your pushing was so efficient that you didn’t even need me in here!”. I was quick to let her know that all the credit went to my birthing team!
Processing the “successes” and “failures”
Transferring to the hospital was not the plan. Especially not for the reasons I transferred. In the days that followed my birth, I went through periods of feeling so excited and relieved that I had gotten a VBA2C and then periods of mourning and disappointment that something so unpredictable came up and led to a hospital birth.
And then, when I was ready to write it out I had a choice to make: do I simplify my story, shorten it and focus on only the things that went right? Downplay the fears that factored into my hospital transfer and make it out to be no big deal? It felt like telling that version of the story would “save face”. I could make my story seem all happy and feel-good, like so many birth stories I’ve read. Like the birth story I wanted to be mine.
But that wouldn’t be honest or real, and if there’s anything that I value and strive to be it’s honest and real. I feel like cleaning up my story would be a huge disservice to every other woman who has experienced a chaotic birth. And you know what? Despite the things that went awry and despite the chaos, I accomplished so many things I has asked God for. I was able to :
-labor in the most beautiful setting, surrounded by the support of Jackson, my mom, my best friend and a team of woman who empowered and encouraged me every step of the way
-experience what it’s like to dilate past 6 cm
-redeem the feeling that my body was incapable or unable
-and ultimately, I was able to accomplish a VBAC after two c-sections, and that’s nothing to downplay.
*Only 2.9% of woman who have had 2 cesareans even attempt a vaginal birth. How sweet to be a part of that statistic!
After having some time to process and work through everything that transpired, I can genuinely say I feel proud of my body. I have never felt as strong or empowered or capable as I did pushing out our son.
I have never, in 3 births, had the story I wanted. It’s never been easy or smooth or straightforward. But every birth has brought me nearer to the Lord and has taught me something about myself and my heart.
This birth taught me that things don’t have to go perfectly to be redemptive and beautiful. My birth was messy and unexpected and disappointing and yet, it was also beautiful and glorious and empowering and redemptive. And most of all, my story is mine and I’m going to own all the parts of it because it brought me our sweet son and he is worth all of the chaos and unmet expectations.