In today’s episode, Meg from Nebraska shares her Cesarean and VBAC story. Meg’s first birth was an unexpected Cesarean after an almost 40-hour induced labor at 41 weeks and 3 days due to failure to descend. Her pain was not managed well during her surgery and her experience was much more difficult than expected. Meg surprisingly found out she was pregnant just 9 months after her Cesarean. Though she was anxious, Meg decided to go for a VBAC. She found The VBAC Link, prepared her body and mind more than before, found a supportive provider, and hired a doula. At 41+3, Meg went in for a gentle induction. She trusted the outcome would be different and it was. With the help of her doula, Meg was able to move much more, and with the encouragement of her midwife, pushing was a much more successful experience this time around. Meg says that bringing her 9-pound, 14-ounce baby up to her chest was the sweetest and best moment. Asynclitic BabiesHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello everybody. Welcome to The VBAC Link. Today we are going to be sharing our friend, Meg’s, story. She is a stay-at-home mom in Omaha, Nebraska and she has a two-year-old daughter who was born after a post-date induction and almost 40-hour labor that ended in a Cesarean. Just 9 months later, she was blindsided by a positive pregnancy test and spent the duration of her pregnancy preparing mentally, spiritually, and physically for the birth of her son. She had a VBAC and she is here today to share her story with you. Some of the things along the way through her story that I thought stood out were one, post-dates. Obviously, this is something that we– if you have been here at The VBAC Link, you’ll know that we talk about this. Post-dates– we have seen such a shift over the last few years, well really since the ARRIVE trials in dates and we really see that now the 39-week mark is more true to a 40-week mark. The 40-week mark is more treated like a 41-week mark and it’s really starting to become rare to even have people go to that 41-week mark and especially past it. She’s going to be sharing her story with you today actually with both births that went past 41 weeks. They were actually both induced so we have an induction that turned Cesarean and an induction that ended in a VBAC. She also has that close duration– that 9 months later, 17 months apart. So if you are listening and you are one of those mamas who may have been pregnant by surprise or chosen to get pregnant sooner than the 24-month mark or even 18-month mark that many providers suggest, definitely listen up for this episode. She also has a larger baby. Her VBAC baby was larger than her Cesarean baby. She also has a failed epidural. There was something that she said in her story that I wanted to point out. That is after many, many, many attempts that were not going well with this epidural, she asked for the highest anesthesiologist there. That is something that you can do right from the get-go. If you are wanting an epidural, you can say, “Hey, I want to make sure I have the top anesthesiologist,” because sometimes it is harder for people to place an epidural or if after one attempt it’s not going really, really well, you can just say, “Okay. Stop. I want the head anesthesiologist.” Another thing that we are going to talk about in there is the question. She mentioned The VBAC Link blog that talks about the questions for your provider. If you have not checked this out yet and you are still looking for a provider, I highly suggest checking it out. We will make sure that the link is in the show notes so that you can see more about who you are looking for when it comes to support versus lack of support because if we have not learned anything over all of the years of supporting VBAC clients, our own VBAC journeys, and listening to story after story, that is that support is huge so make sure you find the best supportive provider that you can. Something I wanted to add to this is if you have a female provider, you may want to ask them about their births if they have kids. We have seen here in Utah that there are some providers who will just schedule a C-section. They won’t even go into labor and for some reason in my head, that feels like a red flag if a provider doesn’t even believe in birth and their own ability to birth. I don’t know that they are going to believe in other people’s ability to birth so that might be something to consider. Last of all, I want to talk about asynclitic. We have seen many asynclitic births over the year and a lot of the time, once a baby is recognized to be asynclitic, they are pretty low and it can be a little bit harder to get a baby rotated and into a more ideal position for a vaginal birth. I wanted to share some tips that are right here actually on Spinning Babies. Check out spinningbabies.com. You know we love them and we will have a link here...
