Birth Plan
Birth Plan
With the birth of our first daughter Adalynn, I have been both physically and emotionally scarred. Since the day she was born I have been researching facts and planning my successful VBAC for our next child. For this reason I ask that only positive, VBAC friendly support be administered. To our family this is not just another birth, it is a way of healing.
We would like to have our baby in the comfort of our own home. If a transfer to the hospital is necessary, we request that a home-like atmosphere be maintained (dimmed lights, quiet, music, free to move around).
To increase my chances of a natural vaginal delivery we ask that our wishes during labor and birth be respected. These include:
Labor
I understand that my due date is a mere estimation and anywhere from 37 to 42 weeks is still considered safe and normal. I will not be pressured into being ‘overdue’ when I am less than 2 weeks past my due date. If I do go over 42 weeks I will discuss the possibility of induction unless a biophysical indicates everything is fine.
Under NO circumstances will a date be selected for an elective c-section or a discussion to book one.
No vaginal exams unless absolutely necessary or requested
No artificial rupture of membranes
No hep lock (if in hospital)
As long as myself and baby are doing fine I do not want any time constraints put on us
No continuous fetal monitoring (if in hospital)
Birth
Myself or Nathan to catch the baby
Delayed cord clamping until cord stops pulsating
Nathan to announce sex of the baby and to cut the cord
No vitamin K shot
No eye ointment
First bath is to be given by us
Natural delivery of placenta
In the case of a needed c-section or emergency c-section
I ask that there is no discussion or small talk unless it is regarding me or my family
I would like the curtain dropped when the baby is taken out so that I can see
Nathan to cut the cord and to announce the sex
Baby goes straight to me for skin to skin. If I am not able to, the baby is to be with Nathan skin to skin
No bath
Under no circumstances will there be any separation of mom and baby or dad and baby
No tests performed unless I consent and am in the room (NO vitamin K or eye ointment!)
Do not throw out our placenta, we would like it bagged to take home
Absolutely no visitors except for our daughter Adalynn during the hospital stay
I will be released 24 hours or less after my c-section
*Everything not listed is not standard practice with our midwife (eg. episiotomy, cord clamping, baby to chest immediately following birth, routine checks…etc.)
Let me know if I have missed anything. We are doing a home water birth.
VBACs
There is Hope for women who do not want another C-Section! More & More doctors are approving of Vaginal Births After Cesareans. While many still believe it is too “Risky” and refuse to do them, women have been fighting back for their right to Push!
Here are some facts, to help you decide what’s best for you & your baby:
Benefits:
- Avoiding another scar on your uterus. (This is important if you are planning on a future pregnancy. The more scars you have on your uterus, the greater the chance of problems with a later pregnancy.)
- Less pain after delivery.
- Fewer days in the hospital
- shorter recovery at home.
- A lower risk of infection.
- A more active role for you, and your birthing partner, in the birth of your child.
RISKS:
- The most serious risk of a VBAC is that a C-section scar might rupture open during labor.
This is very rare. But when it does happen, it can be very serious for both the mother and the baby. The risk that a scar will tear open is very low (1%) during VBAC when you have just one low cesarean scar and your labor is not started with medicine. This risk is why VBAC is often only offered by hospitals that can do a rapid emergency C-section.
- If you have a trial of labor and need to have a C-section, your risk of infection is slightly higher
What Lessens your chances of having a VBAC?
- History of More than one C-Section
- If you’re experiencing the same health issues that caused you to need a C-Section in the past.
- Having a Doctor who does not Support VBACs
- Obesity (However there are many success stories of overweight women having VBACs! So do not let weight discourage you. Just talk to your doctor)
- If your “Trial of Labor” is showing signs of being unsuccessful
What to Expect when having a VBAC:
It will be just like the regular labor process. Except that they will want to monitor you more closely in the Active labor stage! During early labor, a woman can be mobile as she wants. The only thing is, if you have never had a vaginal delivery before, then you’ll experience labor as though it was your body’s first pregnancy. Meaning the labor process will take longer. Where as if you have had a vaginal delivery in the past, your body will be adapted and take less time! If your trial of labor should fail, they will take you straight back for another C-Section.
Here are some links to do more VBAC research:
http://www.vbac.com/
I am a Birthmom; I am ProChoice
holisticmomma.comMany people do not know that I faced an unplanned, crisis pregnancy, like so many other women. I chose to bring the pregnancy to term and place that child for adoption. He was born preterm at 34 weeks, via cesarean four days after my 20th birthday.
At my six-week postpartum appointment, my OB told me I would never need to worry about the pain of labour, as they could just cut me open the next time. Those were his exact words.
I knew I was pregnant the moment it happened; however, this was the stone-age before Plan B was available at the pharmacy. The nearest Planned Parenthood was over an hour away in a city I was unfamiliar with, and I didn’t have an opportunity in that crucial 72 hour window to make the trip during their hours of operation.
Because I was young, single, poor and wasn’t keeping the baby, I was given a high-risk label in spite of being healthy. At my 20-week ultrasound, they ordered an unnecessary amniocenteses because they were unable to see the exact sex of the fetus. Someone may have voiced concern about the fetus being intersex. I was nineteen years old. The child is a chromosomal typical male with no neurological problems.
Adoption was a CHOICE. It was MY choice. It was the choice I made for myself, and it was the right one for ME. Adoption is not the right choice for everyone, nor is it an easy path to take. There are no easy choices in crisis pregnancy.
When I became pregnant with my son seven years later, I was educated enough to know a natural birth in the hospital would be an uphill battle in a system that treated biology as pathology. I knew I wouldn’t escape the ‘high-risk’ label because my first pregnancy had been preterm & a cesarean, in spite of being healthy and completely different circumstances. The hospital system uses language like ‘attempt at VBAC’ instead of recognising the statistical probability of successful VBAC being 80%. The hospital in my area also had a No-VBAC policy.
My choices in birth were either mandatory repeat cesarean or a homebirth in a state with no legal protection nor legally sanctioned Midwifery standards of care. Those were my ‘choices.’
Luckily the homebirth CPM in my area happens to be the best midwife in the world. You can read my homebirth VBAC story here.
Pro-choice is not only about the right to become or not become a mother, it is centered around our right to decide what happens to our bodies, and empowering women in the choices which are right for them. We cannot narrow the focus, or we completely miss how women are being marginalised and denied choice in all areas of the reproductive process.
I am a birth mom. I am a mother. I am a VBACer, I am a homebirther, I am a woman. I am prochoice.
VBAC Mom's!
I have found the most amazing support in the FB VBAC group. The ladies are full of knowledge and encouraging words that I really believe have made the majority of them successful! Here are some links to some more VBAC information as well.
The use of EPO: DO NOT TAKE!!
http://vbacfacts.com/2012/11/13/evening-primrose-oil-dont-use-it-if-you-are-pregnant/
http://ican-online.org/books/cesarean-vbac
The more equipped with knowledge you are, the more interventions you will feel comfortable turning down. My biggest piece of advice is find some like-minded ladies and believe in yourself!!
McCoy's VBAC Birth Story.
Even before I was pregnant with McCoy, I knew that I wanted to try to have a VBAC with no drugs. Quick summary as to why I had to have a c-section with Drew {pregnancy #1}. My water broke, and I was immediately put on the “clock”. Contractions never started on their own. 9 hours of a high level of pitocin later, I was only at 4 cm dilated and hardly feeling the contractions. It was decided by the midwife & doctor that I had to have a c-section, and that something was wrong. Drew’s head had been stuck in my birth canal, and wasn’t budging. A spinal tap and c-section later, Drew arrived. I was in such a haze afterwards. I didn’t call anyone to tell them the good news. I didn’t even update the blog {gasp!}. I just felt drugged up and never felt that warm glowing feeling that I thought I was supposed to feel. The recovery was HARD. I had never prepared myself that a c-section might happen.
I wanted a different experience with my next birth, I wanted to hold my baby right away, and I wanted to nurse him. I didn’t want to be all drugged up afterwards. I wanted a different recovery. I had to be able to take care of my 16 month old at home, so I really wanted to be able to WALK. So I did my research on VBACs. I joined Facebook support groups {cheesy I know}, I talked with people who had had successful VBACs, and I made sure that all the midwives and my doctor supported VBACs. I also took an awesome VBAC class with a Doula from Birth Insight {those of you in Hampton Roads, DEFINITELY take this class!!}. More importantly, the midwives had done many successful VBAC births, so I knew I was in good hands. My husband, family and friends also supported me. I knew the risks, but was ready. I also had accepted that I may have to have another c-section. I was prepared, and even asked the doctor who had done my first, if she could come in and do the second if I needed it. I believed in myself that I could do this.
Here is the birth story. A month and ½ later! {Sorry. I’ve got my hands full these days!}
{Click on the “read more” below to read about McCoy’s birth, it’s rather long…}
That time I VBAC'd a toddler.
I wasn’t mentally prepared to be pregnant for 41 weeks. At all. With Bronson I was prepared to be pregnant forever and then he was born at 38 weeks. So with Ian I was assuming it would be pretty much the same situation. I spent weeks obsessing over each twinge and ache and contraction and wanting to know “WHEN?? WHEN IS THIS GOING TO HAPPEN” so when I finally did start to go in to labor I really didn’t think it was actually labor. Until it was sort of undeniable that this was happening.
Early in the afternoon on the 22nd I started to have discomfort in my lower stomach. By 5:30, about an hour after I got home, it was apparent that I was actually going in to labor. Contractions were about 7 minutes apart and just over a minute long. And they hurt. Not unbearable hurt, but they hurt. I didn’t even bother to call Jon, because he was supposed to be home from work at 7:00 and I didn’t want to call and rush him home just to have things stop. Because that’s sort of how things had been going. Since I didn’t call and tell him I was in labor he ended up staying at work late to finish a few things up. Which meant he didn’t get home until after 8:00. While we waited on him to get home I showered, and ate, and packed up Bronson’s things to send him to Jon’s parents. And the entire time I just kept waiting on things to stop.
Once we packed Bronson off I decided to go to sleep. I figured either a) things would stop or b) I was going to be in labor all night and I should sleep while sleep was still an option. Around 12:30 I woke up out of a dead sleep with such a painful contraction that I couldn’t sit up. I sort of did a roll/shuffle out of bed to try and get off my back and it hit me that I remembered EXACTLY how much labor sucked. By 1:30 I had woken up Jon and my mom so we could get ready to leave for the hospital.
Riding in the car was miserable. By the time we left I was only getting a 2-3 minute break between contractions and it was 35 minutes to the hospital So I was counting down the seconds until I could get out of the car. Once we reached the hospital things picked up, and they picked up fast. The next few hours were intense. There was puking. There was pain. There was swearing, and wondering what the hell I had gotten myself in to. I was hooked to monitors laying in the bed listening to Ian’s heartbeat thump through the room. Due to the VBAC restrictions I had to be on the monitors at all times. The easiest way to determine if the uterus is at danger of rupture is a change in the baby’s heart rate so they wouldn’t let me off the monitors and the mobile monitor was dead, so we were going to have to wait on it to charge up before I could use it. Each time a contraction would hit I would curl my body around myself and grip the bed rail and try to remember all the things I knew about relaxation in labor. I would fight a terrible wave of nausea and count in my head and wait for the wave of pain to subside. I would spend the next 90 seconds trying to mentally prepare myself for the next contraction.
By 5:00am, and about 13 hours in, I was done. After discussing my options with the midwife we agreed to go with the epidural, but only a very light dose. They also agreed that when it was time to push they would shut it off, so I would be able to feel to get him down and out. An hour later (a brutal, BRUTAL hour later) after getting the necessary blood work and fluids they came in to administer the epidural
I slept for about an hour, and then I was awake. I laid in bed while Jon and my mom slept and I stared at the ceiling. I felt my stomach tighten with each contraction and felt Ian kick through them, as if to express his displeasure with being forced out. I fought panic at not being able to push him out. At not dilating like I needed to. Of going through all of this and not being able to get him out. It was also really strange that I could move my legs and my body and feel the contractions, but I couldn’t feel the pain associated with them. But the more I moved around the less effective my epidural was, so after a couple of hours I was feeling a ton of pressure and pain through the epidural. Not enough that I was in unbearable pain, but enough that I was having to concentrate to get through contractions.
By 10:00 I had asked them to check me. I had reached a point where my entire body was shaking uncontrollably. It turned out I was fully dilated, and things were about to really get going. At 10:25 I started to push.
For some reason (I have no idea why) I didn’t expect pushing to hurt. Pushing was, hands down, the single most intense and painful thing I have ever done in my life. I would like to tell you that I handled it gracefully and like a lady and took it in stride. That would be a lie.
My entire body was shaking to the point that I could hardly control it. The pressure was intense. The pain was intense. I felt like I was being ripped in half. Tears were pouring down my cheeks. It hurt and it was so intense that, emotionally, I was off the charts. So I sobbed and pushed and cried some more.
Everyone kept telling me how great I was doing and how close he was. I told them they were a bunch of fucking liars and they needed to get him out of me right fucking NOW.
Every single time I opened my eyes there were more people in the room. Midwives, nurses, nursing students, Jon, my mom, Crystal. It was like my own personal cheering section, and I hated all of them. I was going to lay there and die and they were all just standing there watching it happen AND WHY ISN’T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING. I finally reached a point where I stopped opening my eyes.
Every person in that room was so ridiculously supportive. My labor and delivery nurse was the best though. Because when I reached the “I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this” phase she pretty much told me to stop freaking out and just push. Which is what I needed, someone to tell me to get my shit together and just get him out. So I did. I stopped talking to anyone or looking at anyone and I pushed as hard as a I could for as long as I could.
And then, THEN, we entered the “ring of fire” phase. That shit is not a joke. It burns. And those last five minutes. Those last five minutes I was sure I was going to die. I was going to tear in half. There was no way this kid was going to come out, he was going to be stuck in the birth canal forever. This was also the point in labor where my brain just kept repeating “you idiot you should have just had the damn c-section”.
And then with one final push, and one final scream, his head was out. And then one more after that and it all stopped, all the pain and pressure. A cheer went up in the room and I opened my eyes in time to see them lay him on my stomach and watch him suck in a deep breath and let loose that first cry. And it was like time froze. In that one second between when my body realized he was out, but my brain was still trying to register what had happened everything just stopped. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. He was so fat and so loud. And he had so much hair. I could hear Jon laughing and my mom crying. And the baby was screaming his head off.
And I had survived.
It was 11:00am. 35 minutes after I started pushing, and 19 hours since labor began.
I was amazed. Amazed that I had pushed that giant baby out. Amazed that he was finally here after what felt like a lifetime of waiting. Amazed by how much he looked like Bronson.
I had spent months mentally prepping myself for a VBAC, and the fact that it happened was more than I could have hoped for. This perfect boy that we got to add to our family was more than I could have hoped for.
40 Week Midwife Update
Well my midwife appointment went well today. Baby is in a great birthing position, heart rate was 160. I was overwhelmed with emotions after this appointment today. Thea has such faith in my body and my baby for this VBAC, more than I have in myself, and that means so much to see my support team already encouraging me with kind words. Today I am filled with excitement, nervousness, adrenaline, fear, power, sadness, happiness. I’m sure most of it is hormones, but I’m pretty pumped on this birth. Today Oria just kept asking if we could push the baby out. I take that as a sign she’s ready to meet her little sibling.
Positive Birthing Affirmations!
I have made so many wonderful friends off of tumblr and I would love for you all to be part of my birth and make it an amazing experience. A lot of the time homebirthers make up cards with birthing affirmations on them to look at during labor. Positive words and thoughts really help me when I am feeling down and will give me that extra nudge when I feel like I can’t take anymore. So many of you have expressed that you have faith in me and that I can do it, and you have already given me such drive to have a successful VBAC.
If you’d like to tumblr message, fanmail, Facebook message, text or comment on this post with a positive message or quote that I could read during labor and birth, please do! I will be writing/printing them out and hanging them on the wall around my birthing area so that when I need that extra boost, one of your lovely cards will be there to get me through!
Doula update
I seriously love her. She’s so amazing & funny & just puts my mind at ease. I almost feel no anxiety talking to her, she’s so relaxed. She likes to talk about Abby’s birth a lot. It’s really hard for me sometimes, harder than I expected. But she says to get all of the emotion out before labor is the best thing to do. She doesn’t want to bring any leftover negative feelings to my labor & birth this time. So all the tears are worth it, I guess :)
I also found out my current provider pretty much lied to my face about how a trial of labor would work. It shows even more that they are in no way supportive of a VBAC, they’re just doing it to humor me I guess. She thought it was so ridiculous & could not stop laughing about it. I was shocked because why lie? I think that it’s what they have been taught so I tried not to get angry. I try to believe that they have good intentions, just are misinformed.
Anyway, there’s pretty much no reason I won’t be able to switch to this midwife & prepare for a homebirth instead. If it’s in my records or they took me into their practice under the pretence that I would be trying for a VBAC, it’s a verbal agreement. So I’ll hopefully be meeting with her as soon as possible to talk about everything.
I’m preparing myself to “break up” with my current practice & that makes me nervous. I’m still in shock, I never thought I’d be able to have a homebirth until I decided to hire a doula. I have you guys to thank for that. I would have let my nerves & anxious feelings get to me & I would have flaked and changed my mind about calling her. If it weren’t for all of the encouragement I’m getting from you, I’d be stuck in a crappy situation. So, thanks & all that crap :)
Also, cross your fingers that I get in with this midwife. She was highly recommended by my doula & her midwife friends. This would be amazing.
*faints*
A midwife has already emailed me back & she offers a free consult! & as long as my ob has in my records that I’m a candidate for a trial of labor, I could have a homebirth. I’m so happy.
Aaaaand I’m meeting with my doula tomorrow & I’m gonna ask her a zillion questions but it’s okay because she is amazing and knows everything.
This could really happen!
Why I can not (and will not) be induced.
(I’ve been asked this a few times and I realized I never really addressed this here. So here is my long winded explanation of why we aren’t going to be inducing.)
Bronson’s birth was, for lack of a better term, a clusterfuck. My water broke on it’s own but after 14 hours of labor I wasn’t dilated. At all.
Which lead to cervadil. And pitocin.
And at hour 26 my med free birth plan was already so far out the window (and I was so far past exhausted) I got an epidural.
I eventually made it to 10cm and was able to push. Which I did. For 4 hours. Four. Hours. Bronson weighed almost 10lbs and inherited his father’s giant head. Turns out it’s next to impossible to push out fat headed 10lb babies while flat on your back.
He ended up going in to distress. I had an emergency c-section. He spent the first 5-6 hours (I’m a little hazy on this) in the NICU and I ended up with a seriously nasty uterine infection and spent a week in the hospital. I had serious issues with it, almost had a nervous breakdown, and ended up with a raging case of PPA.
So I plan to do everything possible to avoid a repeat of that shit show.
Our goal is to VBAC. The practice I am with, and the hospital I am using are very VBAC friendly. Due to liability issues though they will not (and can not) induce me. When you introduce induction meds to someone who has had a c-section it increases the likelihood of uterine scar rupture. Very rare and very scary, but an increase all the same. So I can not be induced. And even given the option I don’t think I would take it just because of how things went last time.
All of that being said I’m going in to this with an open mind. More open than it was last time where I refused to even entertain the thought of having a c-section. My goal is to get this baby here and keep both of us healthy while doing it. I’m open to all the different ways that can happen. I am hoping for a med free VBAC. Will it happen? Maybe, maybe not.
I do have a c-section schedule for 42 weeks +1. So regardless this baby will be here by the end of the month. I sincerely fucking hope I’m not still pregnant come the 30th, but you never know.
Goal number 1 is baby. Everything else is negotiable.
